Pune to Ayodhya : Ordeal in the pandemic

Five hundred boys and girls stood in the hall waiting for Col. Ram Singh. When the old Colonel came, his formidable presence suppressed all the sounds. The wind slowed down so that rustling leaves wouldn’t dare add noise. As he spoke without a mic, everyone tried to get most of what he was saying. “How many of you want to or can go home? Raise your hands.” Colonel asked. He didn’t see any hands. Then he asked, “How many of you want to stay here?” All wanted.

The hall where we gathered. (This photo is of another event)

When on the evening of 24 March 2020, the government announced a nationwide lockdown, little did it think about some five hundred odd students in Dakshana Valley in Kadus Village of Pune, not that it was considerate regarding millions of other citizens. This presented a serious problem before the administration of the valley. These students were from all parts of the country, from different districts, and mostly from villages. In a locked-down nation, it was not an easy job to arrange transportation to about five hundred odd villages. For a moment, even if it was possible, still was it the best decision to send them to their villages? These government school students, mostly from impoverished rural families, were selected to be prepared for IIT and Medical. Everyone at Dakshana had put their sweat and blood to ensure that they succeeded, for success was not an option but a compulsion for them, the only way to bring their families out of the vicious circles of poverty.

Colonel asked, “How many of you have a separate room or proper place to study? How many of you have to do some work at home?”. He asked a few more questions, and it was clear that sending scholars home would drastically decrease their chances of success. Scholars were all young and less prone to the virus; the campus was very isolated, in a village valley far from the city; thus, a safe bubble could be ensured. Sending them home meant leaving them on their own. Most of the scholars had lived in restricted residential campuses of JNVs and had no experience traveling alone; in addition, only a few had phones which could be helpful during the travel (phones were banned in Dakshana). Keeping them on campus seemed best for them.

“All right, kids, I am not going to send you home, I have a government order to send you, but I won’t follow. What will they do to me?” Colonel smiled. “I will offer them myself and say hang me? Who will hang an old man like me?” he chuckled as his ripe white hair glistened in the slant rays of the evening sun.

The campus is beautiful and peaceful.

Hostels

Dakshana Valley, an isolated place, was a safe haven during the pandemic.

Most of the students and I were delighted with this decision. In the neighboring village, some people had returned from the covid hotspot city, and supplies like milk came to us from that village, so a weeklong lockdown was imposed on the campus, and we were restricted in the rooms. Our mathematics teacher, Amit Sir, would come to our rooms and ask if we had any problems with any questions. That was a good time. There were no classes. We got ample time to practice and sleep (our sleep quota was increased to seven hours from the earlier five-six hours).

But the virus was not going any soon, nor did the lockdown. Supplies to the campus started getting hindered. Rumors among students increased their discomfort as there was a lack of information, so everyone believed what anyone said. Recent cases of gross indiscipline caused reactions from the administration and teachers, and staying there started to feel stressful. Now, many students began wanting to go home. In a few days, things took a turn, and the admin decided to send us home.

There was news that governments arranged buses for students stranded in Kota; we hoped the same for ourselves. Kota has reporters who could print happy masked faces of students returning on buses, and parents of the most students studying there could trend a hashtag on Twitter thanking the government. Such wasn’t the case for us. Help to us wouldn’t be helpful for the government, so its honest and hardworking officers and ministers ignored our help calls. Once, someone could manage to talk to the secretary of the Lok Sabha speaker, but then in Colonel’s words, “Never trust a politician.”

So, Dakshana arranged for our busses to Pune railway station. We heard that some trains were running from there to different destinations. We were grouped according to our states. When our turn came, we were given masks, food, and water and headed to the station.

Before leaving for home, we somehow convinced Cdr. Arun Mishra to let us take some photographs.
In photo: Pradeep Sir and Amit Sir, men who put in superhuman efforts to ensure we succeeded.

Our bus moved through desolate towns to Pune. Roads were empty, but few ambulances and other vehicles could be seen. Our time in the valley had been a time of isolation. Information can cross the event horizon of a black hole but not the boundaries of Dakshana Valley. Leaving the exaggeration aside, we knew very little about the conditions outside. A deadly infectious virus spreading exponentially and shutting down the whole nation was all that I knew about it. Scenes from a movie on zombies were the closest that I could think about covid. Rumors fanned this imagination further.

As the bus neared Pune, many busses packed with men, women, and children waited for their turn to go near the railway station. Police patrolled incessantly to control movement. Then I saw a large queue. At moments this queue coiled up to make a crowd, and then the police would again set it into a line. All faces had the same expression- desperation. A few philanthropic men were distributing food packets. As people saw that only a few food packets were left, they jostled their way to secure them; others sighed with despair, hoping someone else would come and give food.

Lines of buses seemed endless. Each bus had people of a particular state. For a person with experience, it would be easy to approximate the state of the people in buses. I saw many people from the northeast there. Though I could not tell the exact state, having some friends from the Northeastern part of the country made me guess their state. There was a lot from Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, and Madhya Pradesh. I found the game of guessing the state of people in different buses very amusing.

 Workers returning home from the city. [Clicked by Danish Siddique]

Earlier, lots of workers had died traveling on foot to their villages. When cities were locked down and factories didn’t need laborers’ work, they couldn’t afford to eat and pay the rent. Evicted from cities, a group planned to follow the railway track to their homes. Because there were no trains to drop them their homes, they assumed trains were not running. At one spot in their journey, tired, they slept on the tracks, possibly because it was cleaner than the surrounding areas. Freight trains ran over them. Later, their belongings, including stale chapatis, were found along with their bodies.

Our bus stopped under a roadside tree to wait for our turn. Sharmila Pai ma’am, COO of Dakshana, was there to ensure our place on the train to U.P. Now, the government had arranged trains name Shramik Express for workers in the city. That train was our hope. Sharmila ma’am talked to some officials, and we were allowed to get to the train after waiting hours standing in queues outside the station. But it was very late, and the train was to leave in about ten minutes, and we were very far from it. Carrying luggage, including all the books and notes of JEE (which added a lot to the weight), we ran to train like we were running for life. We boarded before the train started. When we counted, we found that some were left at the station. There was a girl whose luggage was boarded by some friends, but she was left behind. But we were assured that Sharmila ma’am would arrange something for all those left friends.

It had to be a long journey, and the train crept to make it longer. Our seats were close to each other; that was a relief.

Representational Image

As trains entered Uttar Pradesh, it started getting hotter. Now, all stations that we encountered were desolate. There was no way we could get food or water. It had already been a day, and whatever Dakshana had given us to eat was finished. People hoped that there would be something at the next station. When the train slowed down at the station, people would look outside desperately. In our group, some friends had some dry food they had bought before lockdown. In the valley, we were rarely allowed to go out, so whoever got a chance to go would buy a good amount of biscuits, namkeens, chocolates, etc. But others on the train (primarily laborers from Pune) were not so lucky. I don’t know how the condition was in the city, but the news was the lockdown was strict. Their kids started asking for water and food. A crying kid would induce other kids to do the same.

The train was unexpectedly slow. It would stop at some random place and would be there for hours. Uttar Pradesh noon sun-heated those metal boxes, and inside we had no choice. Fans on the train wouldn’t work when the train was not moving. It was something none of us had ever felt before. Being hungry during a fast for a day, having eaten well the day before, and having an assurance of food the next day is different. But stuck in train coaches in the scorching heat of North Indian May at noon in a metallic container without food and water for a day with no hope of getting it soon is different.

Some people tried to get water from the train toilets and drank it. But we feared to touch those surfaces that someone else had touched, let alone drinking unpotable water. Now, most of us had stopped talking. You cannot talk much with a dry throat. Back in the valley, I drank lots of water to keep my sleep away. This habit had benefitted me here; I had drunk a lot of water till we had the supply. So, for me, hydration wasn’t a problem yet. After a while driver got some divine inspiration to move the train, a friend guessed that train was delayed so that those who had the virus started showing the symptoms and could be segregated and quarantined at the station.

The next stop was near a village. There were houses some two hundred meters away. Three from our group risked it to go there in search of water. Risks were high; the train could start at any moment. People around the house might not allow taking water from their handpumps. Fortunately, we could manage some water. Now, we were more unwilling to go to government quarantine centers. Since we had entered our own state, not a drop of water or a grain of food was provided. The government had forced all the shops to close, so there was no way of buying something ourselves. This didn’t give a friendly vibe about those quarantine centers.

Some students started getting off the train in a few hours as it neared their districts. Stations were all desolate, and only a few policemen were seen, so students would offboard wherever train stopped in-between stations and tell their parents their location. We were supposed to offboard at the final station, but who cared. We just wished to reach home.

When the train finally stopped, it stopped at the wrong station. We had to wait for two hours inside the train, police guarding outside to keep us inside. A seven- or eight-year-old kid was lurking around our seat and watching us. I started looking at another side to see what he was up to. He, the kid, took a polythene hanging on the next seat and ran away. We had some namkeen chiwda, and when a little was left, it was too salty to eat because all the salt had settled down there. So, instead of throwing it, we just hung it around the seat. He went and started eating it with his siblings. He would have been starving as it was hard to swallow that salty thing.

An empty train was standing on the neighboring track. When police were not around, a woman from our train entered it. That was weird. Sometime later, I saw she was collecting leftover water from different trash bottles on the train into one bottle. She brought it and gave it to her kids, who had just eaten the salty chiwda.

I was transferred to another train that was supposed to take me closer to my district. This train was packed with humans tighter than one would pack in animals. Now, I had no phone to call my parents to tell them at which station I would be. Neither had I traveled much before. This train took us to Pratapgarh. Outside the station, a hundred ml water bottle was given, the first thing to be given in the last thirty hours in the state. For a thirsty man hundred ml is not much. I wanted another but was not given. Outside the station, someone was distributing khichadi; a poster told his name and good work. People were grabbing it wildly. A classmate was still with me, but his condition was worse. I didn’t care about getting covid, no one there did, and I got two plates of khichadi. Despite all the hunger, I could not eat it. I was too thirsty; khichadi was too bad, or it has something to do with tolerating a long period of inhuman conditions, I don’t know, but I couldn’t eat it.

There were buses for all districts. There was one for Ayodhya, but it was so packed that I had to decide whether to get infected or get home early. I didn’t get on the bus. There was a handpump nearby. I drank a lot of water. Now the world looked clearer. I waited under a tree for another bus. Then I sheepishly approached a man to ask for his phone to make a call fearing that he would refuse it due to fear of infection. But he didn’t seem to care and handed me. I cared, though, and used his phone only after sanitizing.

Slowly darkness around started to dilute. For the first time in my life, I had remained awake the whole night. A tea seller came selling tea. I bought two. As I finished, the sun was rising, and my father reached there to take me home.

Sumit and I are on our way home.

~Anurag