For returning migrants, time spent working is time well spent

Gardening, sculpting during quarantine

Try and leave this world a little better than when you found it...,” the corny quote goes. The people one would least expect to take this to heart are migrants at quarantine centres, considering the struggle they endured. Yet, heart-warming acts of altruism - from workers rejuvenating gardens to sculptors carving sculptures - have emerged from people lodged at these very centres.

When 65 migrant workers returned home from Mumbai to Kalaburagi on May 14, they were placed in quarantine at a local government higher school in Mangalgi village. The inmates, men and women between 25 - 30 years old, were daily wage labourers. At the school, they got to work immediately; the school in Mangalgi is said to have the largest public grounds in the district: four acres and 20 guntas.

The plants the students had carefully tended to over the past two years had withered away during the unrelenting summer, there was no one to nurture them due to the lockdown; the garden was overrun with weeds and some plants left standing were eaten away by cattle.

When the migrant workers arrived at the centre, the teachers were preparing the schools grounds for the new academic year in June and had set aside samplings to be planted. “We used to come to the quarantine centre everyday for supervising duty. Looking at some of us watering the plants, the workers approached us and said they would take up the work themselves,” says Baba Gouda, a teacher at the school.

During the first day, the residents set about clearing the space around the school and repairing the bund around the plants, so it could retain water. In the subsequent days, they cleared out the tall grass; built fences around the plants and planted the saplings that were lying around the premises.

The local Gram Panchayat supplied the school with water by filling the overhead tank; the migrants used jerry cans and buckets to water the plants around the school twice a day.

They would begin work after having breakfast, continue till the lunch break and resume work in the evening.

Over 400 plants of pongamia, teak, Ashoka, Singapore cherry, coconut, gulmohar, neem, mango, gooseberry/amla, jamoon, peepal, flowering plants, ornamental plants and vegetables like curry leaves, drumsticks, lime, guava, were tended to by the workers.

“We are working individuals. We cannot simply sit idle day-after-day and not work. The government helped us out during a tough time and put us under quarantine... they are providing us with food and a decent place to stay. When we are given all these facilities, we have no difficulty working,” says Ramesh, a migrant at the centre.

Looking at the work being carried out in their local school, the village residents decided to supply the quarantine centre with food from their homes.

After two weeks, the test results of all the members came and they were tested negative. During their short stay, however, they had rejuvenated the area around the school. The teachers and students are in for a surprise as the roses, marigold, purple bauhinia that they tended to are all set to bloom soon

“We have worked day and night in other states but this is our home. We stay in the next village. We have cleaned up the premises so that the teachers and students coming here tomorrow do not face any difficulty,” says Bhima, another migrant at the quarantine centre.