I had come to Bangalore 15 days before the lockdown began. I was working as a mason. When the lockdown happened, the construction work stopped and so did my daily wages. The contractor allowed me to stay in the building and gave me food and water. But what was the point in continuing here when there was no income? Besides, my father was unwell and I badly wanted to go back to my village Maihar, near Satna. But I didn’t know how.
I owned a basic phone and didn’t have access to any information. I didn’t know what exactly to do, who to approach. A week ago, in a tea stall, I overheard a conversation that the trains had started and I immediately decided to leave. My contractor gave me Rs.600. I reached the Majestic railway station but was told that the train to MP was due the next day. Since I had no other option, I slept on the footpath that night and the next night too. There were 26 other people who all wanted to go to MP and Chattisgarh, sleeping on the same footpath.
All were quite desperate to go back but there was no news of our train. So we decided to start walking along the highway. Each of us had anything between Rs.200 to Rs.500 on us and we decided to eat every alternate day but stick together and be each other’s support. We walked an entire day and reached the Devanahalli highway, where we were stopped by Babu Bhaiya. He fed us and gave us shelter, dissuaded us from walking with the promise of finding help. True to his word, someone reached out to us and on 3rd June, four of my friends left for Bhopal and on 4th June, I boarded the train! At Bhopal, seeing my penniless state, the TTE bought me a ticket to take the connecting train to Satna. I’m finally back home with my ailing father, my wife, and kids. Once all this is over, I will start farming in my own land and also in others’. I was a farmer earlier and will gladly take it up again!
When I came to Bangalore to build houses, I knew no one, but when I left the city, I had built a whole new family there.
Dharmendra Patel
BeingYou © 2020 #CovidDiaries
