Last year, Minal and I comfortably sat in our bedroom and felt sad about the condition of daily wage workers, poor people who had to migrate from one place to another for the want of food/job/money due to the Covid-19 outbreak. We would continue to ponder how we could help these people but to no avail. The worst part was while we were feeling disturbed looking at their apathy, we continued to blame the system for not doing enough. Having a roof on our heads almost made us immune to the pain of the people without one. We never questioned who the creators of the systems are? Bitterly, it is people like us who make (or rather break) the system. So we had nobody to blame but ourselves.

With the advent of national lockdown last time, started the most gruesome journey of the unprivileged lot. We would end up reading about an exodus of people moving not just from one city to another but also covering the length and breadth of the country. And mind you, India is not a country with very comfortable weather particularly at a time when the Covid-19 out-break happened. The scorching summer really pushed individuals to a corner. And sadly, we, the privileged ones simply turned a blind eye or ended up doing lip service by holding debates amongst friends and gossiping with colleagues or cribbing about our work pressures while working from home!!!

There’s no denying the fact that we all have been traumatized by this disease in one way or the other over the past year or so, but it is important to realize that today if we are in a position where we have a paying job, with a regular or delayed salary and are physically fit, we must feel really lucky when compared to those lads who have been hit even on one of the three fronts.

After having spent a year doing nothing towards uplifting the pain of the downtrodden, we decided this year is going to be the year of ‘doing’ rather than ‘thinking’. As we witness the sudden surge in the Covid cases all across the country, it was time to stand up and get our legs moving to prevent the unwanted movement of the deprived lot like the last year. To help avoid migration of people like the daily wage workers, people with no savings net, security, we decided to make a small change. We decided to buy dal (pulses) and rice for these people. We found a bunch of nearly 50 families around our area and provided them the much-needed supply. We ended up buying 20kg and 50kg of rice. Here are the pics:

We tried our level best to maintain social distancing, sanitization and wore masks. In the end, I would say, it is not the virus that kills, but the unavailability of the care/infrastructure to fight this disease that does. And the ‘India’ we live in today, does not have a very large-scale medical infrastructure to support such a huge population.

In the last I would say, the last time India moved was to fight for freedom, let’s make India move this time to not just survive but thrive!!!

Take care, everyone!