Across the country, there are men and women with swollen feet. At a quarantine centre in Uttar Pradesh’s Gorakhpur district, there is 17-ye...
Across the country, there are men and women with swollen feet. At a quarantine centre in Uttar Pradesh’s Gorakhpur district, there is 17-year-old Baliram Kumar, who had walked from Bangalore over 25 days.
“My feet are cut and scabbed,” he said on the phone, a day after he reached his village. “I had shoes but what good are shoes after a while? I am so tired. My whole body is aching.”
He had left in a group of 15, many of whom got faint and nauseous on the way. The journey turned them into nocturnal creatures. “We walked from 3am to 10am and rested during the day,” he said.
At another quarantine centre in the village school, this time in Bihar’s Katihar district, there is 20-year-old Vinod Yadav. By the time he reached his village, in the sweltering late-May heat, it had been 27 days since he left Bangalore. Part of this journey was made on foot. When the heat grew unbearable during the day, they rested for four or five hours. Otherwise, they walked – all day and all night.
“I got a fever two or three times,” he said. “I would buy medicines from the villages we were passing through and keep going. Sometimes, we rested...
