After lockdown, migrant trail to villages passes over railway lines

Maharashtra is in lockdown, with road and railway services suspended, but many migrant families continue to make a desperate bid to find their way out of the big cities to their remote hometowns and villages, even if it means covering the entire distance on foot over days and nights.
For Sandeep, a 25-year-old youth who worked as a peon in Sion, the long journey home along with the rest of the family has meant trudging down the Konkan railway line that snakes through the ghats after leaving Mumbai.Starting out on Tuesday evening, they took this somewhat precarious route to avoid being stopped by police at checkposts located along district borders on the highways.
TOI caught up with the family on Wednesday morning at 9.30am, some distance from Panvel and about 70 kms from where the party had started out. Sandeep was carrying his four-month-old child in his arms, his wife trailing by a few steps and other members of the group some distance behind. Walking on the concrete planks along the line made for slow going, but they were determined to reach their village Mangaon in Raigad, roughly 120 kms from the metropolis.
Most members of the group were carrying a bag with clothes, food and water, except for Sandeep who had the infant in his arms. An elderly male among them smiled and said they had made ‘rotis’ for the journey. A woman, grandmother to the two children in the group, was struggling to keep up, with Sandeep’s elder daughter in her arms. They were planning to spend their second night out in the open, preferably under a tree or near a village on the route.
Sandeep said the lockdown had left him jobless with no wages to support his family’s needs. He had heard a rumour that restrictions would remain in place for one more month, which convinced him that it would be better to go back to his village where it would be easier for him to find support.
From all indications, migrant Maharashtrians like Sandeep, trying to make their way back to their village carrying whatever supplies they can muster, are large in number. And many of them have set out on foot along the tracks leading to the Konkan and other parts of rural Maharashtra including Kolhapur and Marathwada region.