Every year Lalithamma would donate her year-long savings for the festival at the nearby Areekkode temple. The savings is from her meagre earnings from the Rs 1,200 monthly pension and wages from working under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS).
This year, the temple festival was not held due to the lockdown restrictions owing to the COVID-19 pandemic. Lalithamma, however, didn’t have a second thought and donated the savings to the Chief Minister’s Distress Relief Fund (CMDRF).
The 70-year-old lives alone a in a single room shed at Arinallur in Thevalakkara panchayat of Kollam district. She used to work in a cashew nut factory till 2009.
“This is the savings of the last one year that I kept aside. But I didn’t feel like spending the money for my own use. How could I? The Chief Minister is working hard to tackle the crisis, right? And I’m not someone who is stone-hearted. I watch his press meets, I watch TV news, how can I not contribute my own bit?” she tells TNM.
Lalithamma doesn’t even own a mobile. This reporter reached her through the phone of a local resident.
Once she decided to donate the money, Lalithamma wondered how she could hand over the money. “Then I suddenly remembered the police vehicle that passes through the junction. I see the vehicle every day. One day I stopped the vehicle and asked the police official if I could hand over the amount to him. He said he will get back to me, and left,” she says.
Two days later, Circle Inspector Rajesh Kumar and his colleagues came to her place to collect the money. The amount was Rs 5,101. Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, in his daily COVID-19 update on Tuesday, mentioned the donation made by Lalithamma.
Lalithamma says the moment made her proud. “I watched the press meet on TV, I was happy and proud. I didn’t know this would become news. When I first approached the police, I told them let it be between us and not to disclose it to anyone,” she says.
Lalithamma has been firm that she would live alone without depending on anyone. Her daughter and son are married and live nearby.
“It’s not in my blood to depend on anyone, that would be suffocating for me. I want to earn for myself. My only prayer now is that this coronavirus situation ends soon, so that people like me who are daily wage workers can resume going to work,” she concludes.