According to the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR), 3,621 children have been orphaned during the pandemic, and over 26,000 children have lost one parent.
Shatakshi Sinha, 10, is one of them.
The Delhi-based girl lost her father to Covid-19 a month ago.
Her mother Kalpana Sinha said: “Nothing will ever be normal again.”
Kalpana’s 57-year-old husband was an editor at a Hindi publishing house and the sole breadwinner of the family.
After scrambling for an ambulance and a bed for hours, by the time we reached the hospital, we had lost him. I remember my little daughter running after the ambulance, pleading with me to take her along,” Kalpana recalled.
I have always been a housewife. How am I suddenly supposed to start working? Honestly, I don’t even know what I can do. And even if I do find a job, where will I keep my daughter while I am away? We live in times where no one can be trusted
Kalpana Sinha — Shatakshi’s mother (Kalpana has filled in and filed a form seeking free school education for her daughter under the Delhi government’s scheme instructing schools to waive fees for children who have lost their parents to Covid-19, but she hasn’t heard anything yet.)
Gaurang (13) and Daksh Gupta (6), who live in Uttam Nagar in Delhi, lost their father, an e-rickshaw driver and the family’s sole earner.
Even before the tragedy, life was so tough that the parents had decided to take the younger child out of school and shift the older one to a government school.
My younger son keeps asking about his father, and I do not have an answer. The little one was really close to him... the elder boy has become indifferent. I don’t know what to take care of: my children, their futures, or myself. I’m so clueless and scared
Madhu Gupta — Mother of Gaurang and Daksh (Madhu, too, has applied to her older son’s school for his education to be made free, but nothing has come of it yet.)
Three siblings — aged 9, 11 and 13 — lost both their parents to Covid-19 in the first week of May.
Their landlord refused to let their tenancy continue unless they paid rent.
Their uncle, a welder, took the three children in.
PTI
