It seemed like a lot of weight for one person to carry. Ajayan helped the old woman put all that she bought from the ration shop into his auto rickshaw. He asked her why she bought so much. She said it’s not easy to get out often or get help like she did from Ajayan. Her son had died and at home was her daughter-in-law and two granddaughters. Dropping her off, Ajayan refused to take his fare of Rs 80. He knew that she had borrowed money for even the ration. When she insisted, he made up a fib. “But I am doing this free service for everyone during the lockdown, ammachi (respectful term for older women).”
Ajayan VG has been running his auto rickshaw for only two years now, in and around Kumarakom, in Kottayam district. He has been a social worker for over 25 years and worked with a jeweller before buying an auto rickshaw.
On March 23, the day he dropped that ammachi home, he seriously thought of what he told her. “I thought, why don’t I do what I told her - take out my auto rickshaw to help people like her buy their essentials. I spoke to the panchayat president – AP Salimon – who is my friend, and he said I can take out my rickshaw and do it. He put a post on social media, informing people about my free service with my contact number. And I began to get calls,” Ajayan says.
The next day Ajayan went to the police station, got the permission and began doing the rounds between grocery stores and people’s houses. He’d only go till their gates or the front door and not step inside. The first day, he took 17 orders, he remembers. “Afterwards it was 20 to 25 a day, with calls coming in from 8 am till the night. In between, during Vishu, there were about 30 to 35 deliveries a day. At some places I had to insist on not taking money. One schoolteacher called me home urgently to put Rs 1,000 in my pocket, saying he was impressed by the news. I said it became news because I do not take money,” Ajayan says, laughing.
All the money he needed came from his group of friends, an association called Changathi Koottam (Friends Group) which they formed seven to eight years ago for organic vegetable farming. They paid for the fuel, Rs 200 to 300 everyday, Ajayan says. "That's why I named my rickshaw 'Changathi'," he says.
He traces his urge to help others to the floods of 2018. Ajayan had taken out his auto rickshaw to help stranded people when Kumarakom was flooded in a big way. “It was around the time of that flood that I took my rickshaw. When you bring relief material to stranded people or help them rescue, they thank you. And that felt really good. I wanted to do more,” says the social worker. He did, during the next flood in 2019 too.
Neither the floods – and Kumarakom was one of the badly-hit places – nor the coronavirus appears to keep Ajayan off the road. Calls would come to him from Dubai and other countries, appreciating him and also warning him of venturing out during a pandemic. “I was careful, wearing a mask and gloves and washing my hands with lotion intermittently. Somehow, I felt safe,” Ajayan says.
He took out his rick for 26 days and stopped the service only last Saturday, with some relaxations coming in the lockdown. Kottayam is one of the two districts declared to be in the ‘green zone’ by the government for not reporting a new case of COVID-19 in days.
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