From donkeys forming the traffic to people walking for several kilometres to reach their destination, Ghaziabad presented some strange scenes during the ‘janata curfew’ on Sunday.
At the deserted Sahibabad railway station, a family of three were the only passengers present on a platform that remains crowded throughout the week. For their service was Seva Ram, the pointsman, who was doubling as the catering boy for the family. After all, they had a day to spend on the deserted platform.
Ajay Pandey was travelling with his wife and son from Buxar to Mandi Gobind Garh in Fatehpur Sahib district in Punjab. Their train arrived at 10.30 a.m. and their connecting train was scheduled for 9 p.m. “We were told that it (COVID-19) didn’t affect vegetarians,” remarked Mr. Pandey, perhaps, irked by repeated phone calls of relatives and questions of officials. “The trains were running on time yesterday. So we boarded the Garib Rath. But by the time it reached Sahibabad, it was more than 2.30 hours late. We missed the connecting train. Now we are waiting for Chhattisgarh Express to arrive.”
D.S. Rawat, Chief Booking Supervisor of Sahibabad Railway Station, said he hadn’t seen such a scenario in his more than a three-decade-long career. “A virus has stopped the Indian Railways. Only those trains that left their points of origin yesterday would complete their journey,” he said.
At the Mohan Nagar Chowk, Maharoof, with his six colleagues, was on a long march from Dilshad Garden border to Ghaziabad Railway Station, a distance of around 12 kms. They got down at Nizamuddin Railway Station and took a bus first to Anand Vihar and then to Ghaziabad border. “After that, we didn’t find any conveyance. We work near Goa in a cotton factory. The factory has been shut down temporarily. We are going to our village in Amroha. We don’t know how long it will last but we do know that we don’t have enough money to stay home for more than 4-5 days.”
On the other side of the road, Ovais and his two friends were lucky to find Maqbool, a rickshaw-puller at the Vaishali Metro Station. “We are coming from Sholapur. We walked down from Anand Vihar to Vaishali Metro Station. There, we found him,” said Ovais. Maqbool was tired but happy. He had charged them ₹200 for a distance of almost 5 kms, a route he had never covered because it has two flyovers in between. “What to do, I can’t afford to go home without money,” he said.
At the Narendra Mohan Hospital, Mukesh Kumar, a daily wager, was concerned about the survival of his daughter-in-law, admitted to the ICU. “We were forced to come to a private charitable hospital because we were turned back from two government hospital in Delhi because of lack of beds. I don’t know how I would be able to pay for the treatment.”
‘Panic buying’
A few kilometres away, at the Sahibabad Mandi, Ankit Rathore was livid. He runs a small canteen for those who work in the Mandi. “I have to pay the rent and salaries of the workers even if it remains closed. “Even after the appeal of the PM, people from big colonies indulged in panic buying on Friday and Saturday, raising the prices of essential vegetables. The rich could buy potatoes worth ₹1,000, we keep only ₹10 for it,” he rued.
Mr. Rathore said the administration might be thinking of breaking the virus chain but it could end up also breaking the food chain. “There are a number of beggars and garbage collectors in this area. We feed them by giving them one samosa or one chapati. When we would not be able to feed ourselves, how would we share with them.”
With Ghaziabad put under lockdown for three days, daily wagers are staring at more difficult times.
