Ramzan turns dismal for city family
It was over two years since sisters Tania Niyaz and Tanziya Niyaz had visited their grandparents, who reside in South Coorg, Karnataka.
On March 14, the moment the government declared holidays for educational institutions up to March 31, the sisters along with their mother Shahistha Khanam boarded a bus from Hyderabad to Mysore on March 15 and reached Coorg the next day. They were supposed to return on March 31.
For the last 45 days, Niyaz Ahmed, a resident of Sanjeeva Reddy Nagar is wondering when his wife and daughters would return home. This would be the first time that Niyaz is alone during Ramzan.
“My daughters have gone into depression. They are missing their online classes due to the poor Internet connectivity there. They had gone there prepared for 15 days,” Ahmed, an employee with a Secunderabad-based firm, told Deccan Chronicle.
While Tania is in her fourth year engineering at the Mahatma Gandhi Institute of Technology, Tanziya is pursuing engineering at Sreenidhi Institute of Science and Technology in Hyderabad.
Ahmed’s father-in-law Azmatullah Khan is into coffee plantations in
Ammathi, south Coorg. “I had booked their return tickets for March 28. I rescheduled the flight for May 5 but now it seems impossible for the flight services to resume. It’s Ramzan and all of us are fasting but their absence at home is worrying me,” he said emotionally.
Left ‘home alone’ for a month and a half, Ahmed sees a ray of hope in the order of the Union ministry of home affairs which talks about getting stranded tourists, students and migrant labour back to their home states. “From what I have heard, whoever is getting permits to return to their homes are being sent in buses. We do not know whether other people travelling in the bus will be infected with Coronavirus or not. All those who can afford to come by car should be allowed to do so,” he said.
His brother-in-law has volunteered to drive the family to Hyderabad and return to Coorg. “But we do not know if that is possible. When we checked up with the collector’s office in Coorg, they told us that officials from Telangana state have to give permission. I do not know if using our own means of transport is allowed,” said Niyaz.
Poor internet connectivity in this remote area has become another hassle for the family. “Whenever I have to speak to my family, there is a particular spot, under a tree, 100 metres away from my in-law's house, where there is some mobile phone connectivity. Each time I call them, all of them have to rush towards that spot. My daughters are in a state of depression and it will take them quite some time to return to normalcy when they arrive here,” said Niyaz.