On a moonlit night, under an orange and maroon shaadi-waala shamiana, about 12 cars wait. Next to them are jumbo, 25-litre medical oxygen cylinders battered from use. At the Hemkunt Foundation, just off Gurugram’s Golf Course Road, is a dusty parking lot, where COVID-19 patients and their families queue up for oxygen, now in short supply in Delhi-NCR. It is a 24x7 service, offered free when the cylinders are filled.
“The filling process can take up to three days, and depending on the vendor’s capacity, we can do from 300 to 800 in a day,” says Harteerath Ahluwalia, the community development director. They source oxygen from three States, and a truck is escorted by a vehicle, currently provided by Mahindra. “I am directly in touch with the CEO,” he says, adding that there has been an outpouring of both individual and CSR donations, with companies postponing paperwork to transfer funds or goods quickly.
Under the wraps
He, though, doesn’t disclose numbers of people coming in, funds raised, or the amount spent daily, except that there are 4,000 cylinders in circulation, with 3,000 at the head office in Gurugram and 1,000 in Maharashtra, mainly Mumbai and Pune. They deliver at home and offer cylinders against a deposit of ₹10,000, though he says a filled cylinder costs them ₹12,500 with another ₹2,000 or so for accessories (mask, humidifier). In circulation daily on site are 10-15 cylinders.
People with oxygen levels as low as 35% have travelled from Greater Noida, Ghaziabad, driving 60 kilometres one way; some have taken an auto or cab from Delhi. There are families with three COVID positive members: a son with diabetes and breathlessness has tagged his father and weak mother along. He hasn’t eaten since the morning and he is offered juice by a volunteer – a person with a fluorescent vest, shifting between fixing the cylinder, offering a kind word, and a warm meal sourced from a local Gurdwara.
Isolated lives
A single man, a driver who has no one in the city, is on a Rexine futon on the ground, attached to a cylinder. A family of four drives in with a naani who needs oxygen. Her seven-year-old grandson is in the front seat, because there’s nowhere to leave him. A man in his 20s, who has just lost his job, has come with his brother after having tried several hospitals. They symbolise the isolation of city life made more ironical with strangers bearing flashing kirpans and untamed beards offering help.
Mr. Ahluwalia, who is a management student and has volunteered with the foundation for four years, says he’s been in several disaster situations, but this has been the worst. It is because, he says: “We can’t predict anything.” However, what’s different from last year is mental health. “The efficiency of the volunteers has gone down,” he says, signalling burnout of people working from last year to provide relief. “Also, 50% of us are down with COVID.”
On ground, it’s not the ideal situation. There are no doctors or nurses here, few volunteers at night, mosquitoes breed, and dogs frolic in between cars. But a taxi driver, who has driven his neighbour for the second time in the day here, says, “These people are doing excellent work. Please don’t write anything bad about them.” And a man whose pregnant wife is getting oxygen asks where he can make a donation.
