God bless you!
“God Bless You!” Somebody said this to me when I, as part of the ‘Covid Task Force’ at work, helped them out in an emergency situation. In India, we are so used to listening to ‘Jeete Raho’ or ‘Bless you’ every time we touch an elder’s feet, but I never really understood what it truly meant to be blessed by someone until that day!
For all of us, this past year and especially the past few months have felt like “The Grim” as if , Covid, like the dementors, was sucking all our happiness out. It felt helpless listening to the news, the flood of messages on social media, especially knowing we were unable to help those in distress.
Sometime in the second week of April, in an SOS situation, we struggled a lot to get the basic information on ambulance, tests and hospital beds for a colleague’s neighbour to get him admitted to the hospital. There was a process to be followed to get a hospital bed in Bangalore which not many knew. There was a flood of forwarded messages on oxygen, medicines, plasma, but no way of finding out whether it was authentic. This started a discussion in ‘Women Who Code’ group, that we need to do our bit to help people out, the least we could do was to collate all the critical and authentic information from ambulance, tests, hospital beds, medicines, oxygen, plasma to isolation centres and food delivery services and make it available to people in need.
The weekend of 23rd April, a few of us got together to get all this information available in public domain, verify it by calling each and every number and put it up on a google sheet. It was like getting a crash course on Covid19 and BBMP both. What started with just 5 or 6 us getting together trying to do our bit became a ‘Covid Task Force’ with 200 odd volunteers releasing a very detailed and informative booklet in a mere week’s time.
There were many instances in which the volunteers stepped up and stayed up late nights to make those long waiting calls to BBMP helplines to get a bed or arrange an ambulance for somebody they didn’t even know. Personally, some of these instances will remain with me forever which will keep reminding me of the goodness that still remains.
Kudos to the ‘Women Who Code’ group and all the Covid Task Force volunteers. It is so inspiring to be a part of such passionate group of people who want to try so hard to do their bit even if it means a drop in the ocean. This, to me is the light at the end of the tunnel! Knowing people care, knowing there’s compassion and empathy, is the real “Patronus” to fighting this dementor of “Covid”.
