From Chennai to Pune: A journey of hope, realisations amid COVID-19

It was one journey that one would never have undertaken in normal circumstances – a trip back home with a vehicle full of strangers. But, the times are such that people go to any length to get back home. Perhaps, hope drove them.

It all began with a Whatsapp message – ‘Who wants to go to Maharashtra?’

It was 11:30 pm. Waiting in the balcony for a call from a friend who had already boarded the bus, I was more ready than ever to go back home. Amid the coronavirus-imposed lockdown, I was the last person in a group of ten to board the bus en route to Pune from Chennai.

At the stroke of midnight, I wore a mask, sanitized my hands, completely covered my face and readied myself for the journey.

While walking towards the bus, my heart was pounding, among other strange feelings a random thought crossed my mind. Would have I trusted these people in normal times? Had I travelled with them by any means? For any reason? The answer was a clear — No!

We hardly knew each other and some of us were meeting for the first time. But there was this common goal of going back home that bound us all together. As they say, the crisis gets the best or the worst out of a person. And, there we were with our best versions to help each other reach home safely.

I could clearly feel the anxiety on the bus. All faces covered and everyone keeping sanitizers close by. Eyes filled with a weird mixture of anxiousness, fear, curiosity, and hope. The look in the eyes adequately explained the turmoil underneath. But, we had a mission to accomplish and so we began our journey fearlessly but with caution.

Looking out of the window, I thought of the day when it all began with just one Whatsapp message – ‘Who wants to go to Maharashtra?’

It was week-long planning on the Whatsapp group, filled with multifarious opinions of people who wanted to travel back to their native places in Maharashtra. Soon, we learned that a government permit can allow us to go if we had our own vehicle. A combined curfew/travel pass for ten people, all in the 24-28 age group; a private bus booked according to the norms and seating capacity mentioned by the government in its guidelines; a charge of ₹7,000 per head; and here we were on the move.

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I felt like everything was going good until our bus was stopped at one of the check-posts around 2.30 am. The police asked for a travel pass, took a head-count and we moved ahead. Everyone was worried but later it became part of the routine as everyone knew the drill after that.

While we all wore face masks to keep ourselves protected, the norm of social distancing was impossible to follow on a bus as cramped as ours. However, as every group has an over-cautious person, one was very insistent on everyone sanitizing their hands at regular intervals. This was a sign that people were quite aware of the situation they were in.

Unlike other bus journeys where people are either invested in their music playlist or try to complete their disrupted sleep, insomnia was the most common thing almost everyone suffered during the journey.

The journey began late at night, leaving everyone sleepless for the first two hours as it was time for some long-lost social interaction. And, nobody seemed to have slept until dawn.

As we entered Karnataka from Tamil Nadu, a huge check-point was found at the entrance. Hundreds of vehicles were waiting and people were queued up for thermal testing at 7 am. If found symptomatic, they were asked to wait, otherwise, the vehicle would get clearance for further travel.

However, other than checkposts, we also had a stopover at a petrol pump. But unlike other travels, no one wanted to eat at a dhabba or a hotel or even drink water from anything other than their bottles.

The Maharashtra border at Kagal had a similar check post. Apart from vehicles, many people were sleeping by the side a signboard which read ‘Free meals will be provided here between 12 noon and 1 pm’ and waiting to be screened and given a permit to head to their homes. Most of them were migrants wanting to go home to Karnataka.

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One must wonder, so much checking, so many encounters with the cops, how was their reaction seeing a group of people travelling amid the lockdown?

One common sentiment observed among almost all the policemen was how annoyed they were standing at the roadside for hours to perform their duties, checking hundreds of people every hour. They looked exhausted and they took it out on migrants at times. We were fortunate to not encounter any such violent interaction with the cops.

As we entered Maharashtra, we began dropping people home one by one from Karad to Sangamner until my turn came at Pune. The journey for others continued until the next morning.

After completing a 27-hour-long journey amid the pandemic, as if we were travelling in a war zone, we were more than happy to be home-quarantined. We would pass through a check post after every two to three hours, with the cops taking a headcount and then letting us go and getting thermal tested at times.

The long queues of the vehicles at these check-posts were evident of the huge homebound population on the roads amid lockdown. Some check posts had pandals where free meals were being distributed. People were travelling on any available vehicle. Some were cycling and even walking to their homes, thousands of kilometers away. And, I could clearly see what drove them — definitely, hope!