How a Slumboy makes most of Lockdown - 3

I did not even know the name of this cruel yet kind hearted person. He was like a shallow puddle of water but the water had the depth of sea in it. I asked his name to which he replied, everyone calls him DadaBhai but his original name was Damashankar. He possessed a lot of money. For me, it was crores of rupees but only to bring me back to my senses, he whispered something. I honestly did not hear what he said. He started filling some bundles in a bag and I simply followed him. He asked if I had any friends who could accompany us to carry the necessary items from a grocery shop nearby. I ran and brought my sisters and all of my friends along to visit the grocery store. We bought 40 sacks of wheat atta, 15 sacks of Rice and 4 sacks of Dal. That is all the store had. We all bought 30 packets of 1 kg Salt, 1 sack of sugar and some other things. We gave him all the money we had. I was dumbstruck by this. He had some gloves on his hands before he took the money. There was a big machine like thing beside him. He kept the bundle in it and within 5 seconds, the machine counted the number of notes. To my surprise, It was a note counting machine which I saw for the first time. He started writing down in book and after 20 mins of counting, he uttered the total. The amount we had was 34680/- Rs. 

Well, for me it seemed like crores of rupees. I wasn't that smart. The bill of the grocery was 29000 something and then Dadabhai told him to keep the money as advance and we will come for some groceries after a few days.

Now we had a task of taking it with us. The merchant was kind enough to allow us with his wooden cart to carry all of the essentials. 2 of us pulled the cart and 2 of my friends kept pushing from behind. We reached our Mohalla and every single eyes were fixed on us. They compare that look with a look of a hungry beggar. Indeed, I was observing those 1700 hungry eyes fixed on us with expectations and hopes. I felt responsible for having those 1700 people as my family. Within few days, I'd become more than mature. We were like the guardian angels sent for the hungry people. Though we were one amongst them.

 

There were around 350 families staying together in our mohalla. For a naive person like me, I was bouncing with joy because we managed to get food for everyone. But the happiness didn't last long. 350 Families and 1700 members. What would each family get?

Can you count though?

40 sacks of atta which had 10 kg each in it. That is 400 kg of Atta. Some 400 kg rice and 120 kg Dal. What would each family get? Roughly 1-1.5 kg of Atta and Rice and a handful of Dal. Our family and probably all other families managed to stay out of hunger for 3 days. A family of 7 with 1 kg Atta and 1 kg Rice? At the end of 3 days, we were back to where we had started. 

Now 9 days have passed and it doesn't seem like this will end soon. Everyone was trying to get something. Meanwhile, I forgot about the worries. I did not make any effort in these 3 days because I was busy with my new fiddling device.

How can you forget that I found a phone with a simcard in it? And yes, my bond grew with DadaBhai. I used to stay with him the whole day as my phone could be charged at his home only. He was quite knowledgeable and he also knew how to use a cellphone. He could even read in Hindi and English. I asked him how could he do it? He told he had learnt the languages over years. Dadabhai taught me that anyone with the determination can do anything he wishes or aspires to be. You cannot blame that you're unfortunate everytime. It is you who is responsible for who you are. He gave me an example that many of the people have cellphone. You must have enjoyed seeing dirty videos with Bunty and his group of friends. All of them have phones but they use it for some purpose and I have used it for other purposes. He downloaded a game called Fruit Ninja and I started playing it the whole day.
He did not even say a word and left me there with a few more games for 3 days. While the food exhausted, I was busy playing games on my newly found love with this device. Everyone was worried but then came the twist.

The mohalla had stories from some women. Some of the people claimed to have recieved the bags filled with essentials from other people. One generous man, came and gave a packet each to 20 women and some other guy clicked a photograph doing that. We were happy to hear that. The gossips spread at much faster rate than corona virus. We were obviously not very well-informed about everything. Some corporate or MLA who usually visits our Mohalla during Election with a 100 Rs for everyone who votes, came and asked if we had any problems. This was very unrealistic. He interviewed us and made a list of all of us with details. Next day, a Truck arrived with readymade Food for each of us.
The God has been thinking of us the whole time. Corona virus was a Pandemic for others but we started praying that this virus stays forever. At this moment of time, the roads were clean. There was nobody to make us feel disgusting. There was a time when we had to beg for food and still we stayed hungry and now we were getting freshly cooked meals. This was like a treat in a 5 Star hotel for us. For people like us who ate Chapati and Aloo for most of our meals, were served with dal, rice, vegetables and sweets. Not only food, we started getting milk packets and biscuits.

By the 18th day, we had more than enough to keep us healthy. There was a Van that delivered 3500 chapatis and sabji everyday. The mohalla people used to call it, Allah ke Farishtey or some Hindus call them AnnaDevta. These Vans had 'Chhanydo' written on it. Everyone was happy. 

Well, you might be wondering what was I upto for all these days while all this was happening? I was busy with something that has corrupted all the millennials. Yes, my eyes were glued to my cellphone 24*7 like every normal blessed teenager. The only difference was I did not have facebook or friends on whatsapp. Though Facebook was installed on my phone with a profile of some girl. But my Dadabhai did not allow me to use it. My Dadabhai kept a lock on all the social media profiles, mail access, all games and even Gallery. I don't know why he did that but he wanted to protect me. A slum boy knew the meaning of privacy which I understood quite afterwards.

If I did not play games, did not use social media, where was my time invested? After the 9th Day I am directly speaking of 18th Day. What have I been into for all these days?

Stay tuned to find out