Barmer: An arid part of India where empathy and compassion radiate hope

As the country was roiled by the second covid wave in June 2021, we drove 12 hours to reach Barmer. Everything was shut along the route other than two fruit sellers near Jalore. Ravi was waiting for Gautam and me in a makeshift ICU, 60km before Barmer. A body was being shifted. Ravi’s right foot had a fracture, but you couldn’t tell from what he was doing.

For two days, we followed our team, which was immersed in Barmer’s grief, trying to ameliorate everything—from the ICU to isolation and quarantine centres to oxygen plants and villages with no food.

Disbelief dripping at my folly, on returning, I was asked, “You went to Barmer, now?”

Two weeks later, flames were leaping over the high boundary wall of the field where I once played cricket as a child. I knew what it was, but could not resist going in. The funeral pyres were end to end. Raging because no fire could be allowed to die down. Rows of bodies waited beside each pyre to be consumed. With no loved ones holding their hands in the end, just the PPE-clad workers and volunteers, drenched in sweat from the flames and blazing June sun.

As in Barmer, here too our team was out every minute, helping tackle the scourge with no fear and no respite.

I was witnessing my beautiful Bhopal, my home town, in the grip of death for the second time after 1984. After two days, Abhishek said, “Let us go to Sagar tomorrow. If this is the state here, we must see what our team is dealing with there.”

We left Bhopal at 8.30am. At noon, as we were nearing Sagar, Alok called and said, “Why don’t we go to Damoh, there is even less support there.” He joined us in the car, and we were near Damoh by about 2pm when Kriti called and said, “How about going to Hata, it’s even harder there.”

At Hata, Upendra joined us and said, “No oxygen, no doctors, only the mercy of God if you get infected here.” He added, “Imagine the edge of Hata. There you are not even a death statistic. So, let’s go there.” So, on we went another 25 kilometres. We reached that rocky terrain on the edge of a wildlife sanctuary. How could covid have reached here?

It was 4pm. We sat in the open with a few people from the village and heard stories of breath diminishing to gasps and death. A slight man wanted to hold my hand and hug me for what our team was doing for them. I let him; infection be damned. We were there for 10 minutes. Bhopal was 8 hours away, so we were forced to leave. We went back the same route, reaching Bhopal by 1am.

I was asked incredulously, “You drove 16 hours to chat for 10 minutes?”

In those darkest of days when our world was awash with grief, I was suffused with wonder. From Hata to Barmer to places too many to be listed, what possessed so many to embrace the line of fire without any command or obligation? Providing succour and solace to complete unknowns, tied only by the bond of elemental humanity.

Covid merely brought into sharp relief an unrelenting reality—the darkness of poverty, neglect and exploitation. But it is in this darkness that humanity shines brightest. Those who put themselves in the line of fire do so not only during brief cataclysms like covid, but join battle every day—each small and seemingly inconsequential, fated to remain unsung. Yet, in the long arc of history, nothing else is more consequential than the cumulation of these human acts of courage and empathy.

It was in Barmer that a 26-year-old teacher who cycles 13km to his school, teaches three subjects everyday to 48 children across 5 classes and cooks for them too, told me “Mushkilen ginaanen se kum nahin ho jaati (difficulties do not reduce by recounting them).”

It was in Barmer that two elderly women sprinted down a 100-metre sand dune to pick me up, a stranger, as I was rolling bloodied on the tar of the road.

It was in Barmer’s 48° Celsius temperature that a 14-year-old girl ran 200 metres barefoot across the sand to pump water for 15 minutes for unknown goats who had drifted into the school. And her teacher told me “Ganit nahin padhaa sakte, lekin achcha insaan toh banaa sakte hain (I can’t teach math but can help them develop into good human beings).” Why did I drive 16 hours to Hata for a 10-minute chat? Why do I keep returning to Barmer?

Barmer and Hata are luminescent metaphors for me. Where the terrain is so hard, the heat so scorching, the poverty so wrenching and the water so absent, all that is left is the human spirit. And that fills every breach, tends every heart and keeps people together. A crucible in which humanity is forged every day. If you go there, you will not leave willingly. When you do, it will be with a bit of faith in humanity restored.

She knew my risks, but also knew me best. So, she said, “Go, because it nourishes your soul.” And so, I write this from Barmer. Finding a Barmer can help make life radiant.

The author is CEO of Azim Premji Foundation.