The Yamuna crossed its over 40 year old record of waters above the danger mark earlier this month. The rise and fall in water levels is supposedly, now, in the ‘nor-mal’ range. However, the heart wrenching images and stories in the media which captured the devastation of the unprecedented flooding- of household effects piled on a makeshift boat, of the mass of outstretched hands and a startled Samaritan, of stoical students whose satchels got swept away, among others – continue to haunt many of us.
So, when Ruby Makhija of Navjivan Vihar, a tried and tested ally of RWAs offered to pick up ‘whatever you think will be useful ‘ for dispatch to GOONJ well known for tailoring material aid to felt needs, Shanti Niketan Residents Association and its ladies group, Aao Milo, quickly got its act together.
We gave ourselves 3 days. We opened our homes to old leather suitcases, repaired and spruced up at short notice by Sarojini Nagar’s tree top luggage repair experts and used pots and pans that still had much life in them. We also received a decorated enamel tea kettle snug in its faded original cardboard cover. There were bags and bag-packs, sheets and towels of various textures and sizes and a huge pile of soft cloth as well.
Most of the garments that came to us had once been worn by women but judging from the abundant discarded footwear, it would seem both parents and children in Shanti Niketan like to move with the times. The lady who sent in biscuits and rusks also gave noodle packets, atta, chawal sugar and salt. The explanation for the boxes of Frooti by the friend who co-coordinated the collection drive was that she had strict instructions from her grandson on how the Rs 500 he had insisted on giving her, should be spent.
4 suitcases, 13 bags and 29 cartons made a tidy and respectable sized cluster on the ground. But when it got packed into the back end of the medium size pick- up vehicle and the large unoccupied space revealed itself, we realized how modest our effort was . The age-old reminder-something is better than nothing-proved helpful.
