The last seven days went extremely exhausting for 40-year-old Jagdishwar Singh as he was able to catch only 4 hours of sleep every day. The rest of his time is devoted to a Gurudwara (Sikh temple) where his NGO is running a 24×7 service of providing oxygen to everyone who comes to their camp.
The Gurudwara, situated on the outskirts of Delhi, is getting popularity as the Oxygen temple among the masses amid the acute scarcity of the life material which has plagued the whole of North India.
Taking the crisis into the account, the Gurudwara started the service of providing free oxygen at its door to the needy for a week now.
The volunteers told The Statesman that the facility is catering to 300 patients daily whereas it has provided Oxygen aid to over 2,000 patients so far.
The requirement for oxygen is so critical in the current wave of the Covid-19 which is wreaking havoc in the country that people arrive at the Gurudwara through whatever means of transport they could avail during critical hours.
“People come to us via bike, scooters, ambulance, private car, and even hired cabs. It shows how each minute matters in this viral disease (Covid-19),” Singh told The Statesman.
Singh said that the patients choose his facility as the last resort. “When their hopes dash from all avenues, be it government or private hospitals, they come to us. Many of the patients arrive here in severe condition with their Oxygen saturation dropping as low as 30 per cent. We try our best to save each life,” he added.
82-year-year old Shanti Devi lied on a bed in front of Gurudwara receiving oxygen for 5 hours. His grandson, Ajay said that her oxygen saturation improved from 30 per cent when they arrived at the facility to 80 per cent now. “It’s all because of these angels (volunteers at the Gurudwara).
Ajay also said that her grandmother’s case was rejected by more than five hospitals since her vitals showed a critical level, and he had mentally prepared himself that he is seeing her grandmother for the last time, till, according to him, a miracle happened.
“She was unconscious when I brought her here. I had lost all hopes but then, after ten minutes of intubating her, she slowly opened her eyes. I have now resolved to do sewa (volunteering) here once my dadi (grandmom) recovers. This is a miracle and they are my angels,” teary-faced Ajay said while pointing towards a few young people who volunteered for the cause.
When I asked one of the volunteers who provided aid to Ajay’s grandmother, she said “Sab rab di meherbani hai (It’s all god’s grace)”.
Similar to Ajay, another kin brought her patient to the Gurudwara in a critical condition. Vijyeta came along with her Covid-19 positive mother from Faridabad, a town 40 kilometres far from the Sikh temple.
“It’s 7:30 pm now. I left my house with my mom in an ambulance at 6 am and searched almost every hospital in Delhi, Gurgaon and Noida. I pleaded to the district magistrate here (Ghaziabad) to provide a bed for my mother, I even offered a bribe to the private hospitals as her Oxygen saturation dropped to 40 per cent, but to no avail. When the oxygen supply of the ambulance was almost over and my all hopes to see my mother live dashed, a passerby told us about the Gurudwara,” she said.
“You would not believe. All hospitals had rejected her case due to no availability of ICU ventilator beds. They told me that she won’t survive. But look, she is now talking, although with difficulty. We are blessed by Wahe Guru Ji (holy godman of Sikhs),” Vijyeta added.