“Everyone is busy rejoicing the fact that schools might continue to hold online classes, and people will work from home. While the ordeal of most people will end after the virus, the struggle for people like me will continue to go on.

Sundays are for relaxation and the time to prepare for the week ahead for most people. However, my family and I, and all those like me, are working hard to make sure you look presentable for the week ahead. We have been in the laundry services business for several generations now. While I was working for someone until ten years ago, after my marriage, I started a shop on my own.

Despite the hours of slogging in the heat and dust and making sure the clothes don’t soil up, we only make a hand-to-mouth existence. However, there was not much to complain about as life went by, and we never had to sleep a day on an empty stomach. I lost my mother last year and was shattered, I thought that was the lowest that I could feel in life, and then Corona happened!

With no income for close to a hundred days and a dull phase ahead too, life seems bleak. This ironing shop has been my family’s livelihood for several generations now, so it’s hard to switch vocations. People say that COVID-19 doesn’t discriminate, but ask every workman like me, and they would say that it indeed does. When was the last time you thought about people fighting more than just the virus? When your plate is full, you cannot think about the sufferings of others. Every maid, garbage collector, supermarket employee, truck driver, vegetable vendor, laundry service personal, water can delivery person. All of us are enablers of society. We help you have a comfortable life, so it is important to think about those around you too.

However, I am not saying that everyone is selfish. While I stopped working in March because of the lockdown, I got my one month’s earnings from this NGO called the United Way. But there are so many more people out there like me and struggling to make ends meet. Who is going to think about all of them? When the whole of humankind is fighting against something, shouldn’t we all unite to fight it together? And doesn’t that mean having each other’s back?”

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