It was a typical lockdown day. I was reading in
Moneylife about the 15-year-old Jyoti Kumari, who cycled 1200km from Gurugram to Bihar with her injured father. When I spoke to
Moneylife about what we could do to help, I learnt from the founder Sucheta Dalal about the 11-year old Tabaarak, who had ferried his injured parents in a tricycle cart over 600km to his village in Bihar. I was stunned when she forwarded me the link and the article in the TheWire by Tenzil, the founder of a hyper-local newsline
called MainMedia. He in turn was following up on a video posted by the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Madhu Singh.
Since Jyoti Kumari had already got support from a bank, I decided to explore Tabaarak’s story with
Moneylife Foundation and to see how the connected world would work its magic in this case.
Tabaarak and his parents were stuck in Varanasi after the lockdown. His mother Saugara is blind in one eye and his father Ishrafil had fractured a leg in an accident. With no income, they ran out of food and money and decided to get back to Araria, the headquarters of a district of the same name in Bihar, 600km away.
This, however, did not deter Tabaarak. Asking his parents to sit on the tricycle cart, along with their belongings, he started cycling on this arduous journey. And, incredibly, in nine days, he was able to get his parents home.
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I was dumbstruck-by the scale of the problem, the grit, determination and sheer will power of this little boy, who played a parental role to his parents in the situation. I wanted to help and hence got in touch with Moneylife.
As it turns out, Ms Dalal was independently in touch with the writer, Tenzil on Twitter who had shared the family’s bank details as well as Tabaarak’s mother’s number with her for people to help. “Talk to the family first,” she said, “find out what the actual situation is. Is anybody else helping them? What exactly do they need? Then decide”.
That turned out to be very good advice indeed.
I connected with Ishrafil, who corroborated all the details in the news report. Tabaarak’s hands had sores, caused by holding on to the tricycle handlebars for nine days and were healing now. Money, of course, was an issue. As for assistance, they had some help from local politicians and there was some media interest.
I offered to send some money, but that would not be enough. I decided to post the story on Facebook and WhatsApp and ask my friends to contribute. But what would the family do with the money? I called them back to ask. Ishrafil was already nonplussed that someone in Mumbai would send money to a landless labourer in Araria.
“What will be the FIRST thing you will do if you get some money?”, I asked. “Tabaarak is a very bright boy, sir, I pulled him out of school because I could not afford his fees. His teachers had called me then and had told me that he is had stood first in the class. ‘Sell whatever you have to- but educate this boy’, they had told me”. Ishrafil had mixed emotions.
He was proud that his son was so smart but sad that he was not able to afford his education. Little did he know, that Tabaarak himself would be the means to solve this knotty problem.
So, without further ado, I put together this Facebook post on the 29th of May.
For the first time, I saw a post of mine that got more shares than likes or comments. Within the first five minutes, we got a donation of Rs2,000. I then decided to post it on a few WhatsApp groups as well. Further donations kept coming in. By the end of the day, we had raised Rs25,000. A classmate donated Rs10,000. A trekking friend in the US gave me a pledge as well. I was thinking – could we possibly reach Rs50,000?
I called up Ishrafil to give him the good news. I also asked him to send me a photo of Tabaarak and the family that I could post on FB, along with a thank you note. Since he did not have a smartphone, he said he would go to his cousin’s home and use his phone to send me a photo on WhatsApp. I said, please do it quickly, so that I can post it and close this project. But God had other ideas…but I am getting ahead of the story …
Here’s the photo that came in...
So on the 31st of May, I made a quick post, thanking people for their donations, which by now had reached Rs54,500.
What happened next took me completely by surprise. I got a call from Fahad Maqsusi of the “Let’s Be Human’ NGO from Saudi Arabia. I don’t know how he got my number, but he wanted to help. And he made this beautiful video, which he shared on FB and other media, asking people to support Tabaarak.
Donations of small amounts of Rs100, Rs200 started pouring in… and more substantial sums too from well-wishers. On the 2nd of June, we were close to Rs75,000. Dare I think that a lakh of rupees was possible?
I called up Ms Dalal to discuss this matter. She too had donated money to Tabaarak and had posted it on a bank group, whose members included top office bearers of two large bank associations All India Bank Employees Association (AIBEA) and All India Bank Officers Confederation (AIBOC), as well as her friends and contacts.
They added another Rs41,000 at least to the kitty helping us go past the magic figure of Rs1 lakh that I had targeted. Of these, Altaf Wahedna donated Rs25,000 while former banker Hafizullah Baig, whose family runs the ‘The Learning Curve Educational Trust’, and his son Asadullah chipped in with Rs16,000.
She also said it was important to ensure that the family is counselled to use the money well and it would be helpful if we could connect with the bankers. Fortunately, both AIBOC and AIBEA were interested and agreed to help.
In fact, AIBEA did a lot. CH Venkatachalam, the powerful general secretary of AIBEA connected with Moneylife to say how the bank association had decided to create a fixed deposit of Rs1.10 lakh for Tabaarak and the interest would be used for their needs. He said a team would visit the family and help take things forward.
A few days later, Anirudh Kumar, joint secretary of AIBEA, travelled all the way from Patna to Araria, an overnight journey, to meet the family, help open an account and hand over the fixed deposit receipt to Tabaarak. They found that the family is impoverished, and do not even have a pucca house or any possessions worth the name.
What is most heartening is that Mr Venkatachalam and Mr Anirudh Kumar have generously offered to help us keep in touch with the family to ensure that the money is well used.
Given the large family, there was still the question of Tabaarak’s education and that of his siblings. Tabaarak has an 18-year old brother, who had to discontinue his education and is working in Salem and an older sister, who is married. But there are two other siblings along with him who need education.
While many have offered to help educate Tabaarak, what about the other two siblings, brother Mubarak (aged 8) and sister Gulshan (Age 15)? I was keen that they also get a chance to be educated.
Mr Baig rose to the occasion to resolve this problem. The Learning Curve has agreed to sponsor the education cost of all the three children! This includes their tuition fee, their hostel stay, books, uniforms, and out of pocket expenses as well.
I called up the family - this was becoming a daily ritual now. I asked them to work out the total cost of the children’s education. They promised to go to the schools, once they opened after the lockdown – and get back to me. I am working on it.
So, at the end of it, as I write this article, the family has Rs1,30,000 in their bank account (interestingly, I put out donations on an excel sheet and discovered that our donations was all they had in the bank!), a fixed deposit of Rs1,10,000 and pledges to meet all the education expenses of all the children for the next 6+ years from the Learning Curve.
Tabaarak’s heroic efforts have not gone in vain.
When Chhotte, a roadside vendor in Noida, got looted of his mangoes worth Rs30,000, people all over India sent him over Rs8 lakh to compensate for his losses. I had hoped that something similar would happen for Tabaarak. We have the pledges in place. I have offered to coordinate the efforts to get the family educated and be in touch with Moneylife Foundation, AIBEA, The Learning Curve and Tabaarak’s family.
But we have a long way to go if the fortune of this family has to be changed and, if we can pull out even one single family that suffered badly during the lockdown, to come out of poverty, it would be well worth the effort. Tabaarak’s older brother, who had to discontinue his education and is still very young at 18 also needs our help.
If you would like to donate, here are the details of the bank account of Tabaarak’s mother.
After you send your donation, please do share the details at
[email protected] so that we can help keep an account and update you.
(Peter Theobald works in the IT sector. He is a member of Moneylife Foundation and a donor).
This story is typical of how a chance encounter changes the life of an individual or a family, in this day of internet.
But what about the millions of other migrants who may have suffered even more, may have overcome even greater odds? Their stories will never be told and they will get no help from kind hearted people around the world.
If we are to aid the millions of migrants what is the solution?
And to prevent such tragedies from occurring in the first place, what should we Indians do?
But as we find and struck some case, we should help such family.