Tushar Bharat Gangurde

My Journey as a Covid Survivor

• Covid Journey & Fear: when the virus hit India in March 2020 and we began working from home, we started living in constant fear that the virus will enter our house by any means. As I stepped outside the house for essential needs and NGO- related activities, lingering fear of being a carrier of the virus dominated my thoughts.
• We used to take all the precautions: getting everybody and everything sanitized at the doorstep as we live in a joint family and I have an aged mother and young kids at home. There was a confidence that nothing will happen to me as I am healthy and it affects only weak people. All these were proven wrong in April 2021 when I got infected. As I was working with Covid-19 support groups then, I was aware of the symptoms and all the immediate precautions we should take. Hence the day I felt uneasy and feverish, I quarantined myself in a room and restricted anyone from family to enter my room till I get diagnosed correctly. My wife was pregnant and I could not resist being with her. Somehow she also got infected but with mild symptoms. We both quarantined ourselves from our family in the same house.
• Treatment: we connected with labs and doctors to get the diagnosis and the defined treatment started. Meanwhile, we set our daily routine of diet, exercise and sessions of laughter by watching comedy shows, series, talking to friends, all those things which keep us happy.

As a Covid Warrior:

• I have been associated with many NGOs for a long time and the number is growing since the start of the pandemic as I was working with various NGOs on the ground distributing sanitisers, masks, PPE kits to major hospitals, police stations, BMC offices.

Summarising my activities during the first wave of the pandemic, I:

• Conducted awareness sessions at dense areas like Dharavi, Shivaji Nagar during very critical April and May 2020 window
• Distributed almost 500 liters of sanitisers to BMC offices, major Police stations and the main covid hospitals in May-June 2020
• Distributed relief materials to Naxal impacted area in Gadhchiroli (dense forest area)
• Helped in setting up online skill development classes for many tribal students who could not attend schools by arranging and distributing tabs and identifying volunteers who can provide these courses like yoga, mandala art, martial art, English speaking, history, puppetry, singing, dancing and many more
• Helped in empowering widows from the rural area by donating sewing machines and also allocating some work to enable them to get some earnings
• Have set up a digital platform (https://zedaid.org/) for NGOs to come together and work collaboratively to increase the reach, have also conducted a physical workshop with 25 NGOs in a mall and invited 3 MLAs to address teams and had also set up – blood donation camps, organ donation camps, eye-checkup – heath-checkup camps, material donation camps
• Have helped in restarting schools in tribal areas and sports activities (in Dahanu, Karjat) by having a week-long sports competition in one of the tribal schools and distributing awards to winners
• Helped in celebrating Women’s Day by calling in 300+ women from the healthcare and police department. We also invited housemaids and housewives who have shown extreme support and action in reducing the stress on the ecosystems
• Visited many hospitals and celebrated events with the patients to boost their morals
• Visited many gaushalas and animal shelter homes to help them get more help for their daily needs
• Helped the transgender community by donating computers so they can improve their skill sets by attending online skill courses as well as earn by doing some online work

During my quarantine period in April and May 2021 (when my wife was nine months pregnant and infected with covid), I had set up a task force along with office colleagues and friends to help the needy people with the pan-India information on hospital beds, oxygen suppliers, plasma donors and medicine suppliers etc., I have been able to enhance our digital platform to enable us in providing this information – https://zedaid.org/covid-detail/

On the bright side: we were blessed with a baby boy on 12-May-2021. We are proud to call him our pandemic baby and one of our greatest blessings!