Saba Dewan calls it an “unconscious pooling of strengths”. She and her partner Rahul Roy started ‘Gurgaon Nagrik Ekta Manch’, a citizens’ platform with the core belief of an inclusive India. It was an initial response to the threats being made to stop Friday namaz, after the banning of the religious practice in public spaces in 2018.
Mr. Roy remembers, “There was a group of young men who were disrupting the namaz. Both of us came back and started making calls to various friends in Gurugram.” Like-minded people came together and formed the group, which is today coordinating relief work for migrant workers in Gurugram and surrounding areas, with 200 volunteers on board.
Between the two, the person with the qualities better suited for the project and the situation leads by default. While Mr. Roy is steering the work related to food and movement of migrants now, Ms. Dewan was front and centre during the ‘Not in my Name’ campaign against communal hate.
“He’s actually a people’s person; I’m not. I am a quieter person. I like focusing on one thing and I am not brilliant at multitasking. He is good at both. He can be doing something with distribution, then talking to the procurement team for some rice-atta, then be doing something else,” she says, adding that Mr. Roy has the ability to get diverse people on board and engage with them.
They have known each other for about 35 years now. As film-makers, they are involved in each other’s work too. “We have grown up with each other,” she says, as they ebb and flow, one into the other, instinctively taking up responsibilities as the need arises. “It’s not thought out or worked out. I am better in terms of detailing work – charts, numbers, so it just works out that way.”
After so many years, it’s difficult for “old” couples to discover newness, but Mr. Roy says there are certain qualities that come to the fore in heightened circumstances. “I know Saba is a street fighter, so if there is a situation where there is a certain kind of public expression of emotion or anger, she will take that fight on.”
Expansion of the person
During the lockdown, with people at home and the strain exposing naked wires in relationships, Navin Sellaraju, who has been with his partner for 10 years, says he has discovered that she can be patient. “It’s something I didn’t know was there.” He acknowledges that his parents, who had come for a visit and got stuck in the city, the care of their 14-month-old, post-partum recovery, the lack of house help and of sleep, and her filling every spare minute with getting on the phone to coordinate and connect, have all been new for Shakti Khanna. “The fact that he has noticed it is great,” she says, laughing.
As soon as the lockdown was announced, Mr. Sellaraju, who works with ‘Railway Children’, a not-for-profit focused on fighting against exploitation and abuse of children on platforms, realised they would have to go beyond the projects that were already in place. It would have been difficult to kick-start the relief work immediately, but for Ms. Khanna resourcefully reaching out to a wide network of friends to help raise funds and connecting the organisation to a wider network of people already doing relief work.
He himself decided to invest his time extending his working hours, often taking calls late at night from his team because a situation had arisen. “Earlier Navin worked for about 10 hours; now it’s 24x7,” says Ms. Khanna. In fact, many professionals, like psychologists and teachers, around the city have extended their services free of cost to help people cope during the pandemic.
As they go about doing their daily chores, mopping the house thrice a day because their baby is down on the ground a lot, cooking, washing the dishes, even baking banana bread, all they can talk about is the crisis. “We cried together when we saw the images of the baby [trying to wake up his dead mother] in Muzaffarpur,” she says. There are moments when they are overwhelmed because of the stress and exhaustion when “in the evening we look at our baby who is full of energy and wonder who is going to respond”, but overall, “we’re just so grateful we have each other”.
Sense of gratitude
This is a sentiment that Sijo Mathai Mukulel and Sonia Sijo, who live in Najafgarh, echo. “We are with each other more now than before, and there’s so much comfort in it, rather than going with someone else,” says Mr. Mukulel, who, with his partner of nine years, distributes rations to needy people in the area. “When we go to areas of sex workers, she takes the lead; when we go to areas where there are bachelors living together, I am in front,” he says of the complementing relationship.
The couple, who are embedded into the community through ‘Social Vision India’, a not-for-profit they established, work with women and children across a variety of projects. “We already had a ration programme going, so there are about five to 10 kits always in the building. We know all the families of the children, so if any member loses a job or is unwell, we give them immediate support with these,” he says.
With the centre shut because of social distancing, they began reaching out to those who had a disability, women who were widowed, and the sick, so they wouldn’t be left hungry. The couple have three children, and while there was the joint worry about bringing the infection home, they took the decision to go out and serve. “Hamari soch ek hi hai [Our thoughts are same],” says Ms. Sijo, adding that the children are taken care of by neighbours when they go out together.
“I don’t think I would have been able to do this alone,” says Mr. Mukulel. “We would not have had the same kind of understanding. We sometimes get volunteers who come home for work and we ask them to stay for dinner. If she wasn’t involved, she may not have welcomed them the way she does now.”
Sharon Immanuel acknowledges the support of her partner Timothy. “He is always supporting me in everything I want to do.” The couple run ‘Haven International Coffee Shop’ in Noida, and they first reached out to labourers at a construction site where Ms. Immanuel teaches children. “It’s unique for men to do the dishes without being asked, feed our seven-year-old, help homeschool him,” she says. “I sign him up for so many things and there are no questions asked.” Now that the cafe has started takeaways and deliveries, Mr. Immanuel, who was involved in the on-ground work, while his partner did the coordination and fund raising, wakes up earlier to deliver rations.
It’s the suspension of ego and lack of power play that probably give these couples the drive to focus where it truly matters. As Ishaan Mehta, 18, watched his parents Hemant and Sonali Mehta, from Vasant Kunj, get involved in raising money and carting and distributing water and lassi to people at a local school, he too got into action. “I wouldn’t have been as interested in volunteering if both my parents weren’t,” he says candidly. “There was a lot of conscious talk in the house about what we had done, about what was happening outside our home, which I had never thought about before.” He considers what a long-term relationship could mean: “If you’re together, you need something to work towards – a common goal. I mean, you can have different opinions on music and movies and stuff, but on basic things like human rights or politics – you need to have a common ground.”