Daily jobs have vanished and budget eateries closed after Kerala imposed a lockdown on May 8 to curb the spread of covid.
Three weathered men were squatting on the platform inside the deserted Bus Stand Complex in Kasaragod. It was 1 pm, and the sun was beating down. In a few minutes, more men -- young and old, healthy and with disabilities, Malayalees, and Kannadigas, and Tamil and Telugu -- started trickling in to form a crowd. By 1.10 pm, an autorickshaw with mid-day meals pulled up in front of the closed Hotel Swamy Koragajja inside the bus stand. After a couple of minutes, the men lined up in front of the eatery.
One of the first men in the queue was Vishwanath Shetty, around 80 years old with a severe hunchback. Shetty -- a native of Uppala, 30 km away -- used to work for a restaurant in Kasaragod town till five years ago. Now, the veranda of Badriya Hotel, another restaurant in the town, is his home.
Around 70 persons in Kasaragod town are surviving on the food served free of cost by the restaurant during the lockdown imposed to curb the spread of coronavirus.
The restaurant -- named after a god worshipped across Tulunad -- is run by three friends Vinod Kumar of Mattanoor in Kannur district, Charan Raj of Adukkathabayal in Kasaragod town, and Shijoy K Chelery of Kannur.
They also run canteens in the Collectorate and the Office of the District Police Chief.
In the afternoon of May 11, three days after the Kerala government imposed the lockdown, Charan Raj saw Ramanna, a 65-year-old ragpicker in the bus stand. "Since I often see him near the bus stand, I casually asked him if he had lunch," he said.
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