Gurpreet Kaur Wasi considers herself to be a “strong person who doesn’t normally get fazed”. But something within her gave way a few weeks back. A young boy in Delhi’s Kashmere Gate, down to skin and bones due to starvation, died in front of her.

Ms. Wasi (52) was in the area distributing food. Her work through North East Delhi during the lockdown and earlier, when riots tore through the area, inured her to many things except hunger. “Earlier, I used to tell people that urban hunger is a myth, that nobody in Mumbai or Delhi goes without food,” she said. There’s always a temple or gurudwara that feeds people, or at the very least, a vada pav that is within reach, she believed. “But today, I’ve seen a starvation death. I’ve seen how critical food is.”

Getting people together

The situation is “equally difficult” in Mumbai, said Ms. Wasi. Through connects on social media, she has extended her field of operation to Maximum City and has so far supported over 1,000 families through a network of volunteers from Dharavi to Juhu Gully and even Kalwa. She has also started to help with transporting migrant labourers.

Ms. Wasi, a digital entrepreneur who helps grow small businesses, was no stranger to volunteer work, having worked with Khalsa Aid International and the Super Sikh Foundation.

When the Delhi riots broke out in February, she decided she couldn’t just be a mute spectator and contacted the deputy police commissioner of North East Delhi, the hub of the violence. “I decided to see what I could do by myself. The area was all sealed under curfew, and I got permission for helping with rations,” she said.

Eventually, Khalsa Aid got involved in relief work, paving the way for other organisations to get there.

Just as she decided to pull out of there, the novel coronavirus lockdown was announced. Ms. Wasi continued her relief work in the area, collecting money from family and friends.

For a while, she worked alone, before she put out a call on Facebook for volunteers. Gradually, she started receiving support from all over.

The Mumbai connect

Through these connections, a Mumbai support group came into existence — filmmakers, an entrepreneur, and an online trainer joined hands through WhatsApp to form the Mumbai COVID relief group, which grew over days and weeks.

Fatima Humra Jilani from Versova is one such volunteer. The 43-year-old curriculum head with an online computer training startup was, like Ms. Wasi, a lone warrior when she began, motivated by the urge to just go out there and “do something”.

Ms. Jilani began by putting out a call for volunteers on her society’s WhatsApp group. From serving cooked meals to those affected by the lockdown, she has now switched to distributing groceries.

When Ms. Jilani started, she had no idea whom to approach for help locally. “I needed someone to talk to, and to get some direction. Gurpreet gave me that, and connected me to people. This increased my confidence,” she said.

K.K. Mookhey, who runs a cyber security company in Mumbai, was also introduced to Ms. Wasi’s work during the Delhi riots. He is now actively involved in COVID-19 relief work through Ms. Wasi’s WhatsApp group, besides several others. “I’m on at least 20 groups in Mumbai,” he said.

Like him, Navneet Ranjan, a filmmaker and social entrepreneur who runs the Dharavi Diary project that works with children from the area, too began COVID-19 relief with Ms. Wasi’s group, but is now on his own. “Gurpreet helped a lot, but the bandwidth for the group eventually became large. I’m now thinking of starting a crowdsourcing campaign for Dharavi,” Mr. Ranjan said.

Among them all, Ms. Jilani is someone who Ms. Wasi was still hands-on with, helping her raise funds, connecting her to people, or just motivating her.

The two connected often. Despite never having met her, Ms. Jilani said she felt a sense of comfort working with Ms. Wasi. “She joins dots for me, and ties things up quickly. There is never a need to go through a process to reach her.”

Family support

Despite coordinating relief efforts in Mumbai and Delhi, Ms. Wasi said she was “not left with a choice.”

Ms. Wasi credits her family for being a source of support. “I get at least five calls every morning. I have kids, but don’t even know what’s going on at home,” she said.

The learnings along the way have been huge too. Duplication of effort or people working in silos, Ms. Wasi said, is common.

“In Delhi, everybody knows everybody. The NGO and civil society or social work scene is not as organised in Mumbai. It’s taken us long to find out who’s doing what here,” she said.

Also, there is often a need to verify the genuineness of those who seek help. Over time, Ms. Wasi learnt to “trust everything that comes in,” with checks and balances in place. “You also get to know from telephonic conversations, you use your gut to figure it out,” she said.

Perhaps the most sobering learning for her has been to look beyond her ‘privilege’. “People in vulnerable areas couldn’t care about the novel coronavirus. The first time that struck me was when I went to a slum, thinking people would come to me asking for help. They didn’t want to come near me. They know the disease comes ‘from people like us who drive cars’, and it’s no fault of theirs,” she said. Sometimes, people have said, “We have to die either way. It’s better to die in hospital than from hunger.”