Message for migrants in the time of the Covid pandemic


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Khalda brake tey mar!

I'm in a hired car on the GT road from Lahore.  Typical driver, driving rashly as if in great hurry. His phone rings. He lifts it, looks at the screen for a few seconds, answers reluctantly. His wife shouts, 'Have you paid the doodhwalla', milkman? 'Yes!', he says sheepishly. She goes on complaining about how milk was not delivered today and she has guests at home, no tea to offer them, doodhwalla is unreliable, evil, and life is shit, and so on and on... He manages to say 'Khalda brake tey mar!! Mien phone kardan unoo' .  Hangs up. Calls doodhwalla whose excuse is that there was a wedding today. 'Whose wedding, yours or the villagers' ... 'or the cow they milk', I add in my mind. He is upset with the milkman, shares how the family back home is frustrated and gets him to promise to do it this evening, bring milk, wedding or no wedding. Back on phone to Khalda, explains the situation, complains about her being so impatient, not circumspect at ...
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Wasting

Sakina did not know her age. She never went to a school. She had been married for three years. Her husband was a labourer. They lived in a joint family with her in-laws in a house which had electricity but no gas connection. They cooked on wood collected from fields adjacent to a canal. The tap water was deemed good for drinking because of the proximity of the canal. They did not boil it before use. The nearest government health facility was about 5km from their home. Sakina described her health and her husband’s health as ‘not the best’. Her husband had hurt his back at work, something that bothered him a lot. Their son, Sanval was just about a year old. He was delivered at a hospital through C-section. Sakina could start breastfeeding him only on the 8 th day of his birth. Before that he was given packaged milk because, she said ‘I was told at the hospital to feed him milkpack’. Sanval was also not weighed at the time of birth but Sakina believes that his weakness was visi...
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