As thou­sands upon thou­sands men, women and chil­dren -young and old, some bare­foot, some on bi­cy­cles, some on hand carts and some lucky ones on trucks, buses and trains re­turn to their homes, a heart­less gov­ern­ment, a pur­blind ad­min­is­tra­tion, a pun­ish­ing po­lice force, and a gut­less peo­ple watch in awe and help­less­ness. Writer-artist Gurleen Kaur sketches a face cap­tur­ing the pain of the poor who are mi­grants in their own coun­try.  WSN in­vites you to see the face in the paint­ing. Is it a man or is it a woman or a child or an el­derly per­son? It is every­one’s face. See it closely and share the agony.

E M FORSTER IN HIS NOVEL ‘PAS­SAGE TO IN­DIA’ de­scribes the month of April as the her­ald of hor­rors.  He was only de­scrib­ing the heat. May 2020 In­dia is May­hem May for the teem­ing mil­lions march­ing back home un­der the scorch­ing sun, ask­ing the ques­tion, “Am I not a part of In­dia?” Which In­dia have I have been liv­ing in so far?

The mother with the baby in her arms, the rick­shaw puller with his son sleep­ing on the be­long­ings-filled seat, the sis­ter drag­ging her sib­ling on a mo­bile suit­case, the 15-year old Jy­oti Ku­mari cy­cling 1200 km with her ail­ing fa­ther on the pil­lion, the son car­ry­ing her old mother in arms pricks your con­science, mocks you and asks, “Am I not a hu­man be­ing? Why are my hu­man rights be­ing ne­glected?

Wor­ries add years to a per­son’s per­son­al­ity. The painfully ex­pres­sive eyes show the shades of de­pres­sion. While May­hem May con­tin­ues, are these -the poor­est of poor -the chil­dren of a lesser God -as some de­scribe them -are they wor­ried about the COVID-19 pan­demic?

The wrin­kled skin and lines of phys­i­cal weak­ness, the dark patches be­low the eyes be­speak of the dark web of wor­ries of life. I ashamedly re­call that the Pun­jab which once waited for mi­grant labour at rail­way sta­tions, vir­tu­ally wait­ing to poach them be­fore they are picked up by oth­ers. Now, there is no work -ei­ther in the fields or in the fac­to­ries. Overnight, fol­low­ing a se­ries of lock­downs, the cur­tain of greed has be­fallen peo­ple. Now, we silently watch them leave Pun­jab, vir­tu­ally un­con­cerned.

When on March 25, the ‘Janata Cur­few’ of 21 days was an­nounced, mi­grant work­ers found them­selves help­less with no jobs, no money, no food and no trans­porta­tion. Some stay put where they were at the mercy of good Samar­i­tans and Guru ka Lan­gar for food, and some at the blind mercy for food and shel­ter of what­ever kind from ill-func­tion­ing gov­ern­ment helplines.

Those who did not have the pa­tience started their long walk home. On foot. Blis­ter­ing heat. No footwear. No food. No wa­ter. No di­rec­tion. No as­sis­tance. Only hope and the ba­ton-wield­ing, kick­ing in­hu­mane po­lice force. The whole sce­nario in pic­tures and videos is de­hu­man­is­ing.

I won­dered, ‘what’s the use of that tech­nol­ogy and ad­vance­ment that we boast of which died-off so quickly and could­n’t even with­stand the dis­ease for a few days at least to help those mi­grants reach their places safely? Air flights for the rich and fa­mous -some se­cre­tive and some an­nounced and noth­ing for the poor! How can we be so in­hu­man? It re­ally pains me.

Is the gov­ern­ment deaf and blind? It dis­gusts me that the gov­ern­ment, the bu­reau­cracy, the me­dia, the so­cial me­dia war­riors -all failed the kids and chil­dren cry­ing for food and wa­ter.

When I heard In­dian Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Modi say­ing that In­dia is ahead of many coun­tries in the fight against Covid19, I thought, ‘Wait a minute, Is this not an il­lu­sion?

The poor say to TV cam­eras, “it’s bet­ter to die of the dis­ease than dy­ing of hunger.” An­other il­lu­sion adding an­other ‘feather in the cap’ of state gov­ern­ments, with some ex­cep­tions like West Ben­gal and Ker­ala, is the set­ting up of makeshift camps for mi­grants, where so­cial-dis­tanc­ing is thrown to the winds, in­creas­ing the risk of in­fec­tion.

Fi­nan­cially-starved state gov­ern­ments al­low­ing the open­ing of liquor shops and the po­lice and other law en­force­ment agen­cies look­ing the other way in en­forc­ing phys­i­cal dis­tanc­ing shows the shal­low­ness of rules and reg­u­la­tions.

The cops of Badaun in Ut­tar Pradesh have shamed us no end. In­stead of help­ing mi­grants, the po­lice bru­tally pun­ished them for break­ing the rules of the lock­down. As I watched a video where a worker while telling his story said that it was even more dif­fi­cult be­cause of rain that they faced on the way, I felt so shame­ful and had tears of em­bar­rass­ment as those days I was en­joy­ing those rains, in the com­fort of my home.

This em­bar­rass­ment pro­vided me with an in­sight into the depth of pain be­hind that face in my sketch.

See the sketch closely. Again. Can you share the pain and do some­thing about it?