‘Oxygen langgar’ warriors featured on cover of Reader’s Digest India

By Reader’s Digest | INDIA |

BREATHING LIFE INTO US

By the third week of April, watching the news had become an anxious, often horrifying experience. Hospitals were turning away severely ill COVID pa- tients. They had no beds, and, in Delhi specifically, many had no oxygen.

Pradhan of Shri Guru Singh Sabha Gurudwara in Indirapuram, Ghaziabad, Gurpreet Singh Rummy remembers exactly when the second wave crescendoed at his doorstep — it was 11:30 p.m. on 22 April. A 55-year-old woman had been brought to the gurudwara. Her SpO2 levels had dipped to 50 per cent.

“We, thankfully, had some cylinders, but not a lot of knowhow. We some- how brought up her levels up to 95 per cent in about an hour,” recalls Rummy. “We made a video of this and put it up on social media. In about an hour, 100 to 150 cars showed up. They also had nowhere else to go.”

After Rummy, 44, helped set up Khalsa Help International (KHI) last year, he ensured that the needy get ra- tions, LPG and free COVID tests. The organization even helped patients find hospital beds and treatment. Since April this year, however, the scale of KHI’s operations has increased tenfold.

In just three-odd weeks, Rummy and his volunteers had provided oxygen to approximately 12,000 people, but to do this, they had to source cylinders from Haryana, Punjab, Rajasthan and Uttarakhand. Rummy remembers weeping when KHI’s oxygen stocks once dwindled: “Everyone put up their hands, saying we’ll supply hospitals first, but what about those who didn’t get a bed, people who can’t afford one?”

In the end, it wasn’t just individuals who benefited from KHI’s unique oxygen langar—health-care facilities did, too. “At least six hospitals had us on call in case they ran out of cylinders. The government couldn’t help them, but they were able to save lives with the oxygen we supplied.” Even though six of KHI’s 90 volunteers have tested positive for COVID, Rummy tells us that none of his colleagues have yet been vaccinated. “The work we do is non-stop. People are sometimes down for two or three days after a vaccine. If we’re short even one person, many patients would suffer, patients for whom we’re the only hope,” he says.

– Extracted from ‘They Gave Us Hope’ published at Reader’s Digest India (June 2021)