Kings XI Punjab all-rounder Tajinder Singh Dhillon has joined the bandwagon of cricketers who are helping the needy amid the COVID-19 lockdown in the country.
The Coronavirus-induced shutdown has led to a migrant refugee crisis in India as lakhs of people trying to walk back home battling extreme heat and hunger.
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Tajinder realised the gravity of the situation when he happened to tune in to a news channel one evening a week ago.
“The main highway towards Kanpur is about 100 metres from my house, and the people on the news spoke about that route being used by migrant workers who are moving out of Delhi,” Tajinder was quoted as saying by KXIP website.
Subsequently, the 27-year-old from Rajasthan swung into action and provided food, water to the poor migrants who were taking the highway near his house.
“I told my family members that all of us should collectively help these migrant workers, many of whom were walking without chappals (slippers). I then called my friends who live in the vicinity and we planned out on how to distribute food to the migrants,” he added.
Tajinder also extended his support to others by providing potatoes and flour to make vegetable and chapattis for the migrants.
“A gentleman in our locality has a vegetable business so I requested him to give me potatoes in bulk for making the sabzi (vegetable),” he said.
“We also got 50 kilos of wheat flour which we distributed equally to a lot of households in my colony so that they can make the bread. By the end, we had about 1400 bread ready for distribution.”
While the policemen helped organise the crowd, Tajinder and his friends distributed the food to the underprivileged people.
“The first day we fed around 1000 migrants, the next couple of days that number rose to 5000, which included so many young children. Alongside feeding them ‘aloo-puri’, we also gave them milk and ‘meetha paani’ (sherbet),” he stated.
“We have been distributing food for five straight days now. There were fewer people on the road today, so we gave the food to the buses that were ferrying the migrants back to their home towns.”
(With PTI inputs)
