Rendered jobless due to lockdown, they are working at shelter homes; feeding the needy

Sitting next to a pile of bottle gourd, 25-year-old Vishal is busy peeling the vegetable. It is 2.30pm and he has just two hours to finish the pre-cooking preparations,

Sitting next to a pile of bottle gourd, 25-year-old Vishal is busy peeling the vegetable. It is 2.30pm and he has just two hours to finish the pre-cooking preparations, including dicing 30 kg of the vegetable for the next meal which will be served at 7pm at a shelter home in south-east Delhi’s Sarai Kale Khan.

People at a food distribution by the Delhi government at Laxmi Nagar, on day fifteen of the 21-day nationwide lockdown to check the spread of coronavirus, in New Delhi. (Raj K Raj/HT PHOTO)

Vishal, who used to work at a bookstall in the Nizamuddin railway station, says he does not know how to make food. But in the last two weeks, he has picked up some basic skills while helping a team of cooks at the Delhi government-run shelter home.

“Everything changed after the janta curfew (March 22),” said Vishal, who hails from Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh, and worked at the bookstall for three years, earning Rs 8,000 per month.

“I had shifted here a few months ago to save money, but now I don’t know if I’ll get my job back or not as the bookstall owner has also suffered huge losses due to the lockdown,” he said. Vishal says he has a younger brother, who is in class 11, and a grandmother back home to support.

Besides Vishal, there is a team of eight-nine people, most of them rendered jobless due to the lockdown, who have taken charge of providing meals to hundreds of needy at the shelter home.

It was Santosh, a cook at a roadside eatery at the CGO (central government office) complex who lost his job due to health concerns a few months ago, who got the team together. The 46-year-old manages the open-to-sky kitchen at the shelter home. Every day they cook for nearly 600 people.

A few kilometres away at another shelter home in Yamuna Pushta, 42-year-old Ram Lakhan says he does not have free time anymore as most of his day is spent in the preparation of the two meals a day that he and six-seven others prepare for almost 3,500 people.

Lakhan, who hails from Itah in Uttar Pradesh and used to work with a catering service as a cook, says he is one of the lucky ones who, despite losing their jobs, are able to earn some money. close to Rs 700-800 per day by working at the shelter home. He has found work with Safe Approach, the NGO which runs the government shelter home.

“Though I’m not able to earn as much as I used to a few weeks back, something is better than nothing,” said Lakhan.

Safe Approach director Santosh, who runs the 51 Delhi government shelter homes, said he has hired people from the shelter homes to cook meals as the workload increased manifold post the lock down. “The workload is too much now. These people were hired as we have known them since sometime and can trust them with food preparations,” said Santosh.

Bhanu Singh (33), a mechanic by profession and a resident of Morena in Madhya Pradesh, had come to Noida on March 20 for an interview at a factory. He was told to join from March 29. While the first few days after his arrival he stayed at the factory, he didn’t have a place to stay after the lockdown was announced on March 25 and couldn’t go back home also.

“I did not know anyone in Noida, so I called a friend who lives at this shelter home. He asked me to come. I walked a few kilometres and somehow reached here,” said Singh, who now helps in cooking and serving food to people at the Sarai Kale Khan shelter.

Rajesh Kumar, executive director of Society for Promotion of Youth and Masses, who runs close to 62 shelter homes in Delhi, said: “Initially after the lockdown was announced, we had a lot of mouths to feed as migrant labourers had queued up at our shelter homes. It was difficult to manage the rush with our old staff strength. Then, some of these people, who knew how to cook, volunteered. They are a huge help to us.”

Working at the shelter home, all of them say, has helped them sail through a tough period when hundreds are struggling for even one square meal a day.

Vishal, who has studied until class 8, says he hopes to go back to selling books at the railway station when all this is over. “I started working at the bookstall as I love reading. I just pray that the lockdown is not extended and things go back to normal. Thankfully, I don’t have to worry about food… We thought the lockdown was for a day. Had I known that it would get extended, I would have brought some books with me,” he said.