Lending A Helping Hand

The lockdown has inspired people across the Capital to provide food, rations and even emotional support to outright strangers

- Chhavi Bhatia

The devastation and confinement triggered by Covid-19 has brought out the best and the worst in each one of us. If news reports are replete with people who deliberately held back their travel history, jeopardising the lives of so many others, the scales have been balanced by selfless acts of good Samaritans who have looked beyond selfish thoughts and helped out the less privileged tide over these troubled times and reached out to them with a helping hand. Delhi and the National Capital Region has seen individuals, people’s groups and NGOs going the extra mile to help migrant workers and senior citizens with food, medicines, rations, making them feel cared for. These are their stories.

MAKING A MEAL OF IT

Sai itna deejiye ja mein kutumb samaaye. Main bhi bhoohka na rahoon, sadhu na bhookha jaaye. (God give me so much that the needs of my family are addressed and the saint doesn’t go hungry either). Dr Mridula Tandon quotes this couplet to drive home the motivation behind her efforts to provide basic amenities including food to migrant labourers who were stranded in the Capital during the lockdown. Tandon, who has been involved with social causes through her NGO Sakshi, was moved by television images of labourers in Delhi trying to reach their hometowns because they feared they would die of hunger.

A team led by her distributes cooked meals to construction workers, daily wage workers and rickshaw pullers stranded without any means for cooking. The team has distributed 25,000 food packets till now. “The idea is to mobilise the community. Social distancing doesn’t prevent anybody from cooking paratha and sabzi to be served to the needy,” says Tandon.