A few days ago, Mylapore Times received an email from a senior citizen S. Umashankar, a resident of P. S. Sivaswami Salai, Mylapore. He wanted to know if KVB Gardens at R. A. Puram was still a red zone.
His cook stayed there and he wanted to know if it was safe to ask her to come back to work.
He was told that the number of cases had come down but he still had to be very careful. He was asked to take the necessary precautions with respect to sanitation, social distancing and mask wearing.
When we followed up with him today (July 3) he talked about the challenges that he has had to face since the lockdown. “Everybody in my family is above 60 years old. My father in law is 90 and my mother is law is 85. My wife is in a wheelchair and cannot do much work. With no one to help, most of the cleaning work is being done by me. It has been quite difficult but we have been able to manage so far”.
For groceries, veggies and medicines, he says that he is lucky that there are several stores nearby willing to make deliveries.
Umashankar says when he saw the news article on the Mylapore Times website about donations needed for a priest he wanted to help. He called social activist Baskar Seshadri and donated Rs. 1000 towards this cause.
He says, “When Baskar came to get the donation, he volunteered to go to the bank for me. It was very nice of him to help me out with that”.
