Sitting on the relative ‘comfort’ of my sofa at home I file my feature article for the newspaper today. I cook my favourite meal of chicken and vegetable soft noodles, and wash it down with a refreshing glass of barley and lime water.
I message my friends, chat with family, Netflix a movie. Check my bank account to see if any digits are added in front of the 0, alas, no luck there.
I read the news on yet another lockdown extension, watch numerous debates on whether it should be further extended, and follow Twitter hashtags to read about politicians, doing what they do best, taking swipes at each other.
This lifestyle or a variation of this is most of us these days.
Many of us from the comforts of our homes are wondering when we can eat at our favourite restaurant, shop at the mall, walk in the park, catch a movie at the multiplex, or if we will still have a job the next morning.
Worried by our thoughts, and mostly bored, we gear up with masks, gloves, and dab on sanitiser to head to the nearest grocery store—the only chance for many of us to get out of our homes.
While we daydream our next vacation, there are thousands of men, women, and children across India, walking, carrying all their belongings for thousands of kilometres, just to reach the safety of their homes. Don’t mistake, they do not have those oh, so comfy foam insole walking shoes. Many are barefoot. Many are not making it home.
Those who are able to, have pooled in their lives’ savings just to be packed liked sardines in trucks, buses and water or milk containers. It is Indians fleeing from bigger cities to their villages and towns.
Images and videos of men and women dragging their children on makeshift hand carts, an image of a girl too tired to walk, being dragged on a suitcase pulled by her parent, is too emotionally choking to even see. A man was seen in a picture sitting on the footpath with his friend dying in his arms, while he appealed to passersby for help, none did. According to reports, the man died. Another man was seen crying inconsolably while talking on the phone, helpless as he wasn’t being allowed to cross a State’s border to reach his dying son in a town thousands of kilometres away. His son died before he reached home, according to reports.
These are not isolated incidents; these are scenes from across the Nation. While we decide on whether we should WFH or not, these hard-working labourers do not have that choice, nor any source of income since lockdown began.
These labourers are not beggars. They were earning an honest day’s wage, when suddenly one day, they no longer could, and initially were not even allowed to go back to the towns and villages they had migrated from.
All this while we continue to sit in the relative safety of our homes, passing judgment on how these ‘migrant labour’ will be carriers of Coronavirus and spread it to more people.
These people who built our houses, malls, and roads are dying of hunger and exhaustion, more often than not, nowhere close to their homes.
I do not know if lockdown should be extended or not, but it would be comforting if people did not have to walk endlessly just to go home.
The scenes are unreal. This cannot be the India of the 21st Century.
-Tamanna S. Mehdi
Here and There