Care for the Weak: My 3rd Letter to my grandchildren documenting COVID19 times

{This is the third post of the series where I will be writing 26 Letters to my Grandchildren about life and lessons during these tricky COVID19 times for us and what we are learning. Letter1 and 2 can be found here}

3rd April 2020
Vadodara 

My precious little, 

How are you feeling about these letters, young one? Every phase of life, no matter how hard it is, teaches us some beautiful lessons to prepare our progeny to act wisely in such times. The idea is to share them with you, my child, because I trust you have the sanity and smartness to pick up relevant notes from the situation we are in.

This is the third letter I am writing to you in quick succession and I am sure you must be wondering what strange times your ancestors lived in. Trust me when I say this, these times are equally surprising and baffling for all of us especially the poor or the underprivileged in our country who have miserably panicked during the complete shutdown of the country for 21 days and it is understandably so. 

I really wish you grow up in a developed India where a considerable chunk of the humans are still not below the poverty line as the situation is today which means that they cannot even afford two meals per day. 

It breaks my heart to share with you that today in India we have about 450 million people who are migrant laborers, daily wagers or very small businessmen like tea shops owners who earn every day and eat every day, a lockdown means they can’t go to work and will neither get their salaries apart from a very few Good Samaritans or make the little money they made to make both ends meet. This means no food for their families. Also, most of this workforce in the informal economy have no means of reaching home and staying indoors for the 21 days of the shutdown with no food, no money to pay the rent for their shelters and no transportation to go back home to their native state has driven them to a state of frenzy. So, dear, they have started walking back to their homes with their families, sometimes a distance as much as thousands of kilometers. 

It is heart-wrenching to see them with their little ones on roads, they don’t fear death by coronavirus but by hunger. Our Prime Minister, Mr. Narendra Modi,  has announced 1.7 lakh crores to help them fight these difficult times but the problem is they don’t have access to this information. Handling 133 crores of population isn’t an easy task whatsoever and I believe he has done a remarkable job so far and is close to most of us citizens’ hearts. 

The poor are scared, they feel that going back to their village will be the safest for them as they don’t have work anymore. To them, this is a bigger crisis then fighting a deadly pandemic. 

Many of us are trying to do our bit in caring for the weak. We have donated in the special PM Cares fund made especially for this purpose. We are also motivating all our friends and friends and our national and international readers to do the same too. 

Your grandfather, has routed all the CSR money of his company there too. Small efforts like talking to our employees including office boys in all six offices in India, ensuring them that we are there for them and their families and also paying all their salaries on time is a small effort we are making with all our hearts. This is the time our strength will lie in being united as a strong family and being there for each other. This is undoubtedly a moral responsibility of each one of us. 

We will stand strong only if every countryman of ours has enough to eat and stands strong too and till they can’t we must do all that we can for them. God is kind, he will set things right. May he give us all the more opportunity to help the needy to the best of our opportunities.

Today is the tenth day of the lockdown and the situation is grim with the number of people who have contracted COVID19 are increasing crazily each day. The country is on war-footing against it and our frontline warriors in this battle are our doctors and paramedical staff. In my next letter, I will tell you about them beta. 

Don’t take things to heart a lot as my letters are soaked in my overwhelming emotions of these times, I wrote these letters so that you know about it firsthand....hopefully soon you shall also read how we emerged out of these troubled waters💓.

Sending a bear hug to you my child 

Your granny

Roma 

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Hi Everyone, thanks for dropping by, this is my fifth consecutive #BlogchatterA2Z as well as global #AtoZchallenge and this year I will be writing ‘26 letters to my grandaughter’ with a special purpose which shall unfold as you read this series. In case you wish to check out what I wrote in the previous 4 challenges here are the links 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019. 

If you like what I write, you can grab the copies of my four published ebooks here: The Fragrance of True Love, Destiny's Favorite Child, Dare to Defy The Destiny and Empowered Women Empower Women