India is in crisis.
At a time when infection rates are soaring and every day brings grim news, at a time when beds, oxygen, medicine & hope seem to have all run out, all of India is feeling the same despair, the same distress, the same devastation.
But through the darkness, there has been a ray of light.
The Sikh community has been at the forefront of relentlessly helping people during through the pandemic. If the rich living tradition of food sharing, as widely practiced in langars or community kitchens, fed millions last year, then this year the langars have provided an even more critical & basic element of life – oxygen.
In the time honoured Sikh tradition of selfless service and compassion, these Oxygen Langars sprang up almost immediately across affected cities, and in gurdwaras, where volunteers stood with oxygen cylinders for hours, helping breathless patients breathe, helping India breathe.
The Delhi Sikh Gurdwara Management Committee & NDTV are coming together for a special fundraising campaign, Dil Se Sewa – Helping India Breathe.
The funds raised will aid in providing this urgently needed support, amongst many others. It will go to support the gurdwara’s immediate & critical interventions like the oxygen langars, a newly created COVID care facility and the free ambulance service. But it will also contribute to other existing efforts that all aim to strengthen India’s health system for the future – the free dialysis hospital, the low cost MRI & CT Scan centre and the dawakhanas that provide medicines at reasonable rates.