The Messengers of God-Covid Volunteers

 

The storm of Covid was desperate to take the entire human race in its arm. There was mourning of death all around. The government system was getting insufficient to save lives. Death was raging everywhere. Crematoriums were overwhelmed with the dead bodies. Humanity was beginning to be ashamed. Hospitals were full. Medicines and oxygen were not available. In some families whole lives were at stake. Efforts were replaced by prayers. In such tiring times, there was a need of messengers of god. The one who can snatch away the life from the mouth of death .In the series of Article, I am going to discuss about these messengers of god. They were working 24X7.They were challenging their limitation every moment. They were creating miracles. I am talking about the individual volunteers, volunteer organizations who were working day in day out and trying to leave their never ending foot print on humanity.

Who were they? They were ordinary people like you and me. You could find them anywhere. You could see them in your Mohalla, society, college, work place .Only thing which make them different or extra ordinary  is when situation arrived they behaved differently. They didn’t curse the situation but fought back.  They didn’t waste their time to criticize the govt but created the alternative. They didn’t see the cast, religion but only saw the humanity. These torch bearers of humanity are endless. I have searched some of these diamonds and putting their side of story. 

Messengers of God- EEMA/Pearl Academy/Maneesh Aggarwal and his team.

During the peak of second wave there was a panic situation in Delhi & NCR. Every passing day was becoming tougher from the previous day. Hospitals were overwhelmed with the patients. No helpline number was in a position to give correct information. People were praying that Covid shouldn’t enter in their home. But once it entered, the whole family used to get caught up on this. Now struggle of survival started from here. Family knew that they might have to secure hospital beds, necessary anti biotic, oxygen cylinders and even food as well. This was is the general story of Covid affected families in Delhi NCR. In the Covid management, availability of oxygen was proven to be most critical. Every moment was important for the patients who needed oxygen. When cases picked up fight for securing the oxygen started at different level. Fight was going on in PMO, CMO, High court ,supreme court and the last but not the least  on the road of Delhi & NCR. Common man was stumbling on the road for oxygen. In this background Event & Entertainment Management Association (EEMA) decided to launch 24x7 helpline numbers for providing reliable verified oxygen availability information to general public. They decided to Contact Pearl academy for executing the whole plan. Now Pearl academy had made the team in the leadership of its faculty Maneesh Aggarwal. He was ably supported by Srishti Chawla, Sachit Arora, Neha Dubey ,Anjali Godara, Devika Gupta. Maneesh made four hours shift for attending the help line number. Dedicated volunteers were assigned for attending a particular time slot .Time slot and numbers were distributed as below-

08:00 HRS - 12:00 HRS - 9711170220

12:00 HRS - 16:00 HRS – 86964 96094

16:00 HRS - 20:00 HRS – 85878 34472

20:00 HRS – 24:00 HRS – 81266 54666

24:00 HRS – 04:00 HRS – 96544 18883

04:00 HRS – 08:00 HRS – 98733 25428

These numbers were flashed on social media and in different WhatsApp groups. Once number flashed they started getting the calls. Traffic of call was huge. They were receiving more than thousand calls a day. Apart from this they were also receiving the request for help on WhatsApp. Now the challenge was to provide verified information to the needy one. So they zeroed 21 locations where oxygen supply were available. Five each in South, west and north Delhi. Three each in Gurugram and Faridabad and one in Indirapuram. Oxygen supplier numbers got flashed and so many people started calling, they couldn’t handle the rush of the calls so they just switched off the phone. Now Maneesh and team deployed his own team on all the 21 locations and team on ground keep reporting to the team in the office about real time availability of the oxygen. Some sites were opening in the morning and some were at late night. You can imagine the enormity of the problem. They were receiving distress call even at 1am or 2am and team was responding them with verified leads. By this enormous effort they saved countless lives and established that when going gets tough then only tough gets going. My best wishes to the entire team

 

Messengers of God- Ashwani Sadhu,Ajay Pandita

There are many shiny pearls in the garland of the KP community; in that garland one of never fading pearl name is Ashwani Sadhu. As cases were rising people across the country searching for resources as govt was not able to fulfill overwhelming demand of citizen. As others, KP community were also facing the shortage of blood, oxygen cylinders, concentrators, medicine and even reliable advice from doctors. In this scenario Ashwani Sadhu formed  two groups KP blood bank (https://www.facebook.com/groups/199331154236704/) and KP Crona Fighters (https://www.facebook.com/groups/965189223902349/) .During the pandemic these two forums remained good platform for providing the relief to the people in distress. He started collaborating with likeminded people for augmenting the resources and in shortest span of time he was able to establish  the network of volunteers across India and overseas. With the help of the volunteers he managed to arrange plasma/blood donors, food , oxygen cylinders/ concentrators, medicines. He also successfully formed the panel of doctors who gave online consultation for Covid patients. The team of doctors from Jammu, NCR. Chandigarh, Mumbai, Pune , Bangalore, Kashmir was available for online consultation. He reached out to the people during the distress through his multiple WhatsApp groups and Facebook pages. He managed to help more than 500 people from across the country. My best wishes to Ashwani Sadhu and his team for serving the humanity in such a marvelous way. I hope he will keep doing the good work and keep guiding the humanity. 

Ajay Pandita

Story of Ajay Pandita will touch another tragic aspect of Covid patients. We keep listening about the scarcity of oxygen, beds or medicine and even to some extent about food as well. No doubt these all are very important but have we thought about other tragic aspects of the pandemic? Cremation of Covid patients was very tedious and risky job where no one was ready to come forward. Even own family members were not coming forward. In Indian culture everyone expects that at least last rights should be conducted in dignified manner. But this pandemic had created so much havoc in our life that nobody was even ready to attend funeral. In these difficult circumstances Ajay Pandita took the responsibility to cremate the Covid patients. He started cremating the Covid patients as per Covid protocol. His  novel act certainly eased the sufferings of certain families. He carried out necessary rituals through Zoom where Pandit jis couldn't join in person. Anyone can imagine the horrible scene of the cremation ground. All cremation grounds were full. There was no space available for the bodies. In these difficult circumstances one has to manage the space and resource for conducting the rituals. As per Mr.Pandita 15-20 bodies were cremated at one go so that time can be saved on rituals. Space crunch was so huge that cremation were conducted even at parking lot of the cremation ground. After cremation he used to go early in the morning to the cremation ground next day for collecting the ashes and was immersing at Brij Ghat, Moradanagar Ganga Canal or Haridwar. This was a regular exercise for many weeks.

Sanitization is another important aspect of fight against Covid. Ajay proactively took up sanitization work in open areas as well as housing societies and offices. He also served food to Covid affected families. He served home cooked breakfast, lunch and dinner to Covid affected families in the surrounding area of Gurgaon.

 Besides all the humanitarian service to needy families he managed to arrange fodder to Cows and wild life in nearby Aravalies where a Gaushala was being supported by some volunteers. He also arranged water tankers for natural ponds which helped in keep water in creeks/ponds for drinking to Peacocks, birds, Neel Gai and all living creatures there.

He also worked on mental health of the families and for keeping them in good health conducted zoom sessions where yoga sessions and anti depression talks got conducted.

He also donated oximeters, concentrators to the needy one in NCR and in valley.

Any words of appreciation would be too short to denote the great work done by him. The work he has done is way ahead from any praise or analysis. All I can say is thank you for being a part of my series. Very best of luck and keep doing the good work.

 

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To BE CONTINUED…………

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