The coronavirus lockdown has been a testing time for all of us. However, some have faced more difficulties than the rest of us. These include the elderly, daily wagers, low-income families, frontline workers, and the police. Many have faced a shortage of food supplies and many have gone through the anxiety of staying away from their families.
Volunteers of The Art of Living from across the country have been reaching out to those affected by the lockdown, braving the risk to their own safety. We call them the lockdown heroes! Here are a few stories of lockdown heroes who have fought every odd to reach out and make a difference.
“The walk was 1.5 hours long. With the ration kits slung on our shoulders, the walk, however, seemed longer. But we were driven. The agnihotra and yoga session last evening managed to keep our energies high. We were walking towards a village in the Kalchini block of West Bengal’s Alipurduar district - a cluster of remote villages sharing the border with Bhutan. Many of these villages are inaccessible by road. Due to their hilly terrain, these villages were once a destination for trekkers.
When the lockdown was announced, I was skeptical if the government would be able to reach there. I was, unfortunately, right. Shops were closed in many villages and the ones with little savings left had to walk long distances to buy basic things. Local volunteers assessed these villages and told us about the families who were in dire need.
One of them was a family of a 25-year-old mother of five kids. The youngest was just a month old. Her husband, a daily wager in Kerala, was unable to wire her money. She was short on supplies. When we provided her a month of ration, we were met with tears of gratitude. In all the thirty-two villages where we reached out, the simple village folk thought we were gods. But we are simple folks who didn’t want anyone in our near community to go hungry.”
Ram Kumar Lama’s team of volunteers reached out to 32 remote villages in the Kalchini block of West Bengal. It took them one day to reach a single village and provide help. Their day’s hard work was followed by their spiritual practices in the evening.
Sheetal, Delhi
“After the lockdown was announced, my mom began worrying about the daily wagers stranded in the city. Most migrant workers in the city do not have a roof on their heads. Many live in shelter homes and many manage on roads, in shaded corners. So dry rations are not of much help to them. My mom wanted to help and within a day of the lockdown, she got permission from local authorities to serve food.
She started cooking ten meals per day, then 7o meals. Soon, she was making 200 meals in big utensils borrowed from our caterer friends. The idea spread among my network of Art of Living volunteers and Project Annapoorna was born. Supported by The Art of Living, Rotary Club, and BLK hospitals, the project started serving meals in two shelter homes in Central Delhi. The word spread. The volunteers said yes to every new request; even at times of fewer resources. Somehow, the resources have come and the team is now serving eight shelter homes.
As it all happens, our family continues the tradition: my dad cuts the vegetables, my mom cooks, stirring with big ladles and I go out distributing the food. My distribution point is a spot of rickshaw pullers who are generally happy to see me. They make demands; telling me they want to eat this, eat that. We give in because we want to reduce their anxiety. Or else they could be breaking the lockdown rules and the virus could just be spreading more. But then my mom doesn't mind the demands. She is just happy, cooking for them. Sometimes I wonder how she cooks so much food without getting tired. With a smile, she says, “I don’t know.’ ”
Uptil now, Project Annapoorna with a team of 50 volunteers has served more than 60,000 meals to daily wagers stranded in the city. The entire Delhi team of volunteers has been serving 7,000 - 10,000 meals per day to daily wagers in the city.
Ritu Narang, Moradabad
“Yoga has the power to bring relief amidst the chaos. I have seen yoga changing the lives of men in uniform, prison inmates, elderly, and everyone else. So when the district magistrate of Moradabad called me to take yoga sessions for daily wagers stranded in the city, I immediately said yes. I conducted yoga sessions in four shelter homes in the city. Braving fear and anxieties of their own, the migrant workers felt relaxed after an hour of yoga.
I also included guidelines to protect themselves and their loved ones from the pandemic, encouraging them to pass on the knowledge of immunity-boosting yoga poses to their family members. In the end, they were no longer daily wagers stranded in the city. They were COVID-19 warriors who were going to help themselves and their communities stay safe once they reached home.”
Ritu Narang, a Sri Sri Yoga Teacher is popularly known as the Yoga Guru of Moradabad.
Akash, Chandigarh
“During the initial days of lockdown, we got a call from people in slums. We had developed a rapport with them after conducting several nav chetna shibirs (community empowerment programs) in the past. They had no food and no money. My heart churned at this thought. Our team of volunteers took permission from the administration and started reaching out to slums in Chandigarh and Mohali with food ration. Many of them are migrant workers who are unable to go to their hometowns. We are trying to reduce their anxiety through whatever means we can - giving them our phone numbers, checking on them periodically, meeting their needs. Because more than the food, they need assurance that somebody has their back.”
Akash is one of the many volunteers of The Art of Living in Chandigarh chapter who is reaching out to daily wage workers. The group of good samaritans step out daily to distribute relief care packages. Till now, the team has reached more than 1,000 families. The team has also helped in providing hand sanitizers, PPE kits, and masks to health workers.
Despite taking precautionary measures and practicing the prescribed sanitation routine, Akash is met with skepticism and fear from some. And what about his family?
Says his voice filled with pride: “When I tell them the stories of people I meet during the day, they say somebody has to do this.”
Reshma, Mumbai
“50 positive cases,” my father said as I was about to go out into those very streets. With gloves and masks in my left hand and a packet of ration kits and food parcels in another, I assured him, “I’ll be safe, papa.” My father looked tensed. With a smile, I said with more confidence, “Nothing will happen.” Outside, I distributed gloves and masks to other volunteers who were ready to reach out to people in need.
During our time working in and around Dharavi, we came across factory workers with no stoves at home, cancer patients living under the bridge, and domestic helpers with no savings. We’ve distributed cooked food and ration kits to them. On many occasions, we’ve been stopped by the police for being out on the streets. They have always let us pass after we tell them why we were there. Once, somebody took us to a home of a handicapped elderly who was surviving on plain rice and salt. When we went there with the ration kit, he said with tears in his eyes, “God has come to help me.”
The cases in Dharavi have increased - 200 and counting. We are staying put at home. However, we continue to reach people who need help. I have kept myself just a call away.”
Reshma’s team of volunteers has distributed 800 packets of ration and has distributed 2,000 parcels of cooked food every day for 2 weeks in and around Dharavi before cases in the slum settlement rose.
Vivekananda, Kolkata
“The day the lockdown was announced, the police were on night duty for 12 hours. There was tremendous pressure on food delivery boys. Tired and hungry, they were working at odd hours on deserted roads with closed eateries. We spent the night distributing food and cold coffee to them. I remember we met a food delivery boy whose bike had broken down. With a lot of persistence, he let us deliver the food for him. He is now helping us with food distribution drives for daily wage workers.
With the aim of reaching out to others who could need us, we built a network of 70 volunteers. Whenever someone messages a volunteer from our network, he or she puts a word out on our WhatsApp group, thereby activating others. Through this network, we have connected the elderly with NGOs providing food, found medicines for a child suffering from malaria, and provided ration to a home for the disabled.”
Vivekananda is one of the many volunteers of The Art of Living chapter in Kolkata who are reaching out to everyone affected by the lockdown. The Kolkata team has distributed over 20,000 ration kits and continues to serve others.
Prabhanjan, Aurangabad
“Health workers at the local government hospital were on strike. A doctor called me to check if we (The Art of Living) could help since we had worked on a service initiative with them in the past. The situation was grim: there were corona-infected patients in the hospital and there were not enough masks and sanitizers. Shops were closed and health workers needed N95 masks for their safety. I got in touch with a volunteer who supplies pharmaceutical equipment. He arranged for 100 masks and the Aurangabad chapter of The Art of Living provided 25 liters of sanitizer to the hospital. Farmers associated with Sri Sri Natural Farming in Aurangabad provided 2 tons of sweet limes for the patients and those quarantined at the hospital.
Likewise, everyone from the community has been helping in their unique way. I am in the business of pressure pumps. Among other things, we build disinfectant units for industries. China has been using such units to battle the pandemic. After a bit of research, I found an economical way of making them - cutting costs by 80%. We’ve donated five sanitizing tunnels for vehicles and 12 for pedestrians in Aurangabad, Ahmednagar, and Jalna. Considering the nature of this pandemic, they will be useful even after the lockdown is over.”
As told to Vanditaa Kothari
