Every day, for the past seven weeks, Mustafa Quraishi, a former press photographer, sets out in his Isuzu from his Gurugram residence to pick up food — his vehicle can carry upto 2,000 cooked food packets or 70-80 ration kits. He drives into Manesar, at about 3 pm, mostly alone, doing 120-150 km a day, to deliver food to people in need.
The hot, dusty road, that travels past shuttered establishments and now deserted spaces — Guru Kripa Trading Company, PS Garden Complete Marriage Lawn, and nasha mukti (de-addiction) phone numbers painted on walls — can throw anyone into a deep sense of grief. In India, we can manage crowds; empty spaces where people once were, leave us with a hollow sense of hopelessness.
In the first few days of the lockdown, Mustafa had responded to a friend’s message on Facebook, then in turn reached out to others who had Isuzus, to ferry grain and oil. “The first day there were about seven or eight cars. From the second day onwards, people dropped out, saying children, parents, backache (as excuses) — these are people who go offroading regularly,” he says. Only he and two others have been working throughout.
In the shadow of boxy flats, under-construction high-rise structures, and hoardings proclaiming messages that include words like “large”, “luxurious”, and “leisure”, live construction workers, communities who sell pots, daily wage workers of all kinds. They have little access to food and it is to them that Mustafa and his band reach out to. The poverty is palpable, the living conditions even in the best of times can erode you, and the COVID-19?
“Door hoke khade hoiye (stand apart),” the accompanying policemen tell the residents who are otherwise knotted into little homes under sheets of plastic — if you don’t take the police along, people will simply mob you. Mustafa gives out masks to each person in the long line waiting for food.
Designer Ritu Kumar has supplied them with 31,000 masks so far. “ Raat mein dhona, subah phenna ,” he tells people whose clothes have not seen washing for days, his upper-middle class moorings not letting go. Here, hunger and health are distinct.
While the outpouring of cash and kind has been huge, and Mustafa says it has helped that first the Navratra and then Ramzan have pushed people to be generous, what is it that prevents ‘people like us’ from reaching out with true empathy to ‘people like them’? Yes, physical distancing is important, but how many of us have volunteered towards any cause even in the past? “Why don’t you volunteer?” Mustafa asks me. I am quiet and he looks me in the eye, taking his focus off the road for an inordinately long moment. Then I say lamely that I have daily pages to produce.
I think about it when I get home. Why am I not volunteering; why have I never? Because if I do, life will never allow me to step back into the coolness of the car and drive back to a home where I insist on organic food and ‘wellness practices’. Everything will seem like an extra, and that one more spoon of rice, unnecessary. If I volunteer, I will truly begin to understand that health begins with no one going hungry. And that is a difficult reality to swallow, for those of us who can afford physical distancing.
