Migrants head home with sacks, buckets, gunny bags

NEW DELHI: With a black cloth masking his face and a skull cap on his sweaty head, 65-year-old Nasir Khan trudged towards the Anand Vihar bus terminal with a heavy white sack on his shoulders. The sack contained all his clothes, a towel, bedsheet, gas stove, few utensils, a kilo of sattu (gram powder) and two water bottles. A basic phone, for which he couldn’t find a charger, was in his pocket, as he hurried from his Tughlaqabad residence on Saturday morning. “I am taking all my belongings to my home in Rai Bareli. I don’t think I’ll return to Delhi,” said Khan.

Alongside him walked Sohan Yadav, a carpenter, who was headed to Sasaram in Bihar. His little brown bag contained four pairs of clothes, among other essentials. “Delhi had been my home for 20 years. I had lost all touch with my village. I have no belongings there, not even clothes,” said Yadav. At his rented room in Wazirabad, 42-year-old Yadav has left behind his carpentry tools, his other belongings and a gas stove. Before leaving, he handed over the room key to the house owner with a request to look after his belongings.

Thousands of migrants walked back to their homes in Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand and Bihar on Saturday — with the hope of hopping into a bus along the way — carrying their belongings in trolleys, travel bags, backpacks, sacks, jholas, buckets and even polythene covers. Most of them were headed to Anand Vihar, from where they hoped to board one of the 1,000 buses pressed into service by the Uttar Pradesh government. “When I began packing in the morning, I found the strap of my handbag broken. I had to hurriedly find a polythene bag to carry my belongings,” said Radhe Shyam, a daily wage worker.

Shyam packed light to keep a fast pace and not tire himself. His blue polythene bag contained a pair of clothes, two inner wear garments, a pair of chappals and a mobile phone charger.