The unfinished story.
Stories are made to disrupt. They are made to shake you up from a reality that has comfortably enveloped itself over you like a warm, fuzzy blanket. Its in these concluding moments of a narration; the last line of a book or the climax of a movie that a wave of emotions wash over you, leaving a part of you changed, forever. Stories aren’t always orchestrated, they are not always planned, they pan out in front of you in millions of fleeting seconds that you and I tend to overlook and for the past couple of days, I’ve been watching tens and hundreds of stories unravel in front of my very eyes.
When institutions crumble, societies are brought to its knees and authorities while away precious time by pointing fingers at each other, what do we as the human race really fall back on? When you watch files of humans drenched in sweat and some in tears grabbing on to their infants, ripped bags and some to their entire livelihood, standing under the sweltering Indian summer and waiting to get to a destination that they might never arrive at, everything you knew about reality takes a hard, irreparable hit. Your conscience takes a bullet shot that takes a very long time to recover from.
As a nation, we are witnessing one of the largest migrant displacements in our history and a lot is concealed beyond what’s shown on television or splashed across the front page of your newspapers. While I stood along with a score of other volunteers, watching waves of migrants lunge the burdens of their past and the uncertainty of their future towards a rickety BMTC bus, I cannot help but look away. There are moments when our eyes meet for a brief second making every ounce of privilege in me tremble before I force a smile concealed by a mask and look away. Most of them approach with their eyes lowered, promptly accept their food packages and move away. Some of them display small bouts of joy to keep their young children happy. Some reluctantly walk away from the large food packages because their frail bodies cannot carry any more baggage and some tear up at the very sight of volunteers handing out water bottles for free. NOTHING, I repeat, nothing I have ever learnt or experienced in life prepared me for this moment. Young and pregnant women carrying sacks of heavy luggage on their heads without batting an eye lid, fathers swaddling their month old infants under their rugged old cotton shirts, wives pushing their immobile husbands on a wheelchair that eventually has to board a train and hundreds and thousands of young students whose lives were deemed meaningless at the strike of the clock on the night of 23rd March, 2020. With bare minimum communication, I still witnessed stories unfold in front of me, one after the other. Stories that had no audience but had to go on till the very end.
Stories transpire all the time and sometimes it seeps in through the cracks and crevices of our societal walls, leaving behind undesirable patches of reality that we haplessly try to paint and cover up from the time to time. These were stories that left me with more questions than answers, stories that gripped and wrung my heart out. While some of these stories are desperately waiting to arrive at their climax, some fester, they stumble and stagnate. The foundation of our ivory towers are crumbling and the surreal view from the top does not negate the truth that lies at the bottom. When the foundations eventually cave in, we’re all just one large story with no walls, no ceilings and no patching up left to do.
The Bangalore Student Community is a confluence initiated by five undergrad students who had the vision to feed the migrants heading back home. They have aided over 30,000 migrant workers across the city with the help of a troop of young student volunteers who join them every day in this journey. You can contribute to their funds or help volunteer on field. It is through their opportunity to serve the migrants that a lot of us are receiving the reality checks that we need.
