The nationwide lockdown with four hours notice announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi did not just leave in the lurch lakhs of migrant workers jobless and desperate to get home — it also affected those who heeded the government’s call and stayed put where they were.

Dharmendra Singh, who works as a driver with a transport company, had left home in Biharsharif for Dhanbad on March 21. Little did he know that the bus he was driving would become his temporary home.

The Janata Curfew and the subsequent lockdown have forced Dharmendra to spend his days cooped up in his bus parked at the Dhanbad depot, around 240km from his home in Bihar.

Timely food, drinking water and toilets now feel like luxuries to him.

“Initially, I was given food by the Dhanbad branch of Bundela Travels, the company for which I work. But that stopped a few days later. After that, a voluntary organisation started providing food to me, but still I have to live on empty stomach for the greater part of the day,” Dharmesh said.

On Friday, he got his food around noon after staying hungry since morning.

Dharmesh said the Sulabh toilet complex at the bus depot that he had been using was locked up a few days after the lockdown, leaving him with no other option but to answer nature’s call in the open.

“My wife and two sons, aged 12 and 16 year-old, are worried about me. They keep calling me on my mobile to enquire about by well-being. I am equally concerned about them. I don’t know when I will get to meet them next,” Dharmesh said.

There are a dozen such drivers and cleaners stuck at the bus depot, and their tales are similar.

Nawlesh Yadav, who works as a cleaner for transport company Shiv Ganga Travels, is another one of them.

The 25-year-old, from Barbigha town of Sheikhpura district in Bihar, is also stuck at the Dhanbad bus depot where his employer had asked him to park the bus after he reached Bokaro from Patna on March 21.

“Earlier, water tankers of Dhanbad Municipal Corporation were stationed at the bus depot but now they have also been removed, creating a drinking water crisis for people like us. Water from the lone hand-pump at the depot doesn’t taste good,” Nawlesh said.

With no sign of the immediate resumption of train or bus services, Nawlesh feels the government should step in and help them.

“We want the government to send us home. Our family members are spending sleepless nights,” he said.

Vickey Singh, the owner of Shiv Ganga travels, said he was helpless.

“We can’t do anything at the moment except sympathising with them. Until the transport services resume, we can’t reach out to them,” he said.

Around 120 inter-district and inter-state buses that operate from Dhanbad bus depot are either stranded in Dhanbad or some other depot outside the state following the lockdown.