I wasn’t exactly sure how my being at the Kisan Mukti Yatra was going to help anyone. All I knew was that I had to be there.

I suppose it’s a bit like being with someone who has suffered a bereavement; you can’t undo their loss, but at least you can sit with them quietly in their hour of grief.

This was a bit like that. I’d been watching experts like P. Sainath and Devinder Sharma talk about agrarian distress on YouTube for several months and I was starting to, very slowly, wrap my head around the sheer magnitude of the crisis that our annadaataas are facing. It takes city slickers a while to understand rural issues.

Also read: Opposition Leaders Unite on Farmers’ Platform, Promise to Make Their Voices Heard

I charged the battery on my camera, hired a taxi for the day (parking is crazy in Connaught Place) and let a few like-minded people know I was heading for Sansad Marg where thousands of farmers were going to gather for the second day of their rally. I got in the taxi and my phone beeped. It was a cousin. “Please buy Rs 2000 worth of biscuits on my behalf and give them out to the farmers. I’ll reimburse you when I see you next.”

What a good idea. Why hadn’t I thought of that?

I told the driver to stop at the local general store and bought all their Parle-G and Marie biscuits. I then decided to put in some of my own money and cleaned out the next store as well. I took a photo of the boot of the taxi filled with boxes of biscuits and sent it out to about 100 people in my phone book, asking them to please also buy biscuits and come to Sansad Marg with them because many of the farmers don’t even have money to buy tea and snacks.

Almost immediately, offers of help started pouring in. Several of my friends expressed their genuine regret that they would not be able to be able to join in but all of them pledged small amounts to help with food. A school principal I have known for several years made it her mission to contact everyone she knew and by the time we had reached Connaught Place, she told me to go ahead and buy all the food we needed and that she and her friends and family would pay for it.

Watch | Let Farmers Address Parliament: P. Sainath

The taxi driver suggested we park by the side of Tolstoy Marg which was the route the farmers would most likely take to get to Parliament Street from Ram Lila Maidan. That turned out to be a very good suggestion and with the help of university students who had also showed up to be part of the rally, we handed out biscuits to wave after wave of farmers as they marched by. I asked many of them if they had had breakfast. Almost all of them said no and accepted the biscuits gratefully. None of them grabbed or pushed. I was struck by their decency.

We then made our way to Parliament Street and as we drove past a samosa-kachori-mithai shop, I knew what to do next. We bought out all the samosas and kachoris in the shop and told the shopkeeper to start preparing a fresh batch right away. I tried to bargain the price down telling him these were for the farmers gathered next door, the people who grow our food, but he dismissed the rally “as an election gimmick by the opposition to appease Muslims and Dalits”.

I decided not to engage with him and focused instead on getting him to keep on preparing large quantities of samosas which we gave out throughout the day to the farmers gathered at Sansad Marg. (And no, he didn’t give much of a discount).

When you are carrying a hundred samosas, and there are thousands of people in attendance, how do you decide who to give them to? The women, children and the elderly seemed to be the logical choice. I asked each person I approached, “Have you eaten anything?” Almost every single one said no. I said, “Please eat something” and handed them a small plate with a samosa in it.

What struck me again was the decency and dignity. No one demanded more, no one grabbed the food out of our hands. Some even politely declined, saying they had already eaten.

As the day progressed and as leaders of various opposition parties addressed the farmers – Yogendra Yadav, Farooq Abdullah, Sharad Yadav, and finally Rahul Gandhi and Arvind Kejriwal – I couldn’t help but note the brevity of everyone’s speeches. As far as I could tell, no one spoke longer than five to seven minutes. Either the event managers’ speaker management skills were sublime or maybe the politicians on stage somehow instinctively understood that the patience of the farmers with long speeches has now run out. One can only guess.

Also read: For Farmers Protesting in Delhi, Climate-Related Crop Damage Has Become the Focus

Chaiwallahs served tea to the thousands sitting on the ground watching opposition leaders speak. once in a while, a farmer would ask a chaiwallah to please not block his view of the speakers. “We have come from so far to hear them speak. Please don’t stand in front of us.”

More than once, a feeling of helplessness overtook me. How many people could we feed here anyway? This was a drop in the bucket. I WhatsApped this to the cousin who had sponsored the first batch of batch of biscuits. She messaged back, “Don’t feel helpless! You’re providing support and empathy. It counts.”

By this time my taxi driver and I were tired with walking back and forth between the mithai shop in Connaught Place and the gathering here on Sansad Marg and so we started buying out all the pakoras and burgers that the hawkers were selling and gave them out. We also commandeered the few chaiwallahs present.

More than one farmer broke down as they received food and told us their story. I honestly didn’t know what more to say to them other than to mumble, “Please don’t lose hope. We are standing with you”, fully cognisant of the fact that those who really need to stand with them, their government, has not.

The feeling of helplessness started coming back. I pushed it away and gave out extra samosas to each person.

As the event drew to a close, a good friend of mine called saying she was on her way to the rally with her three-year-old daughter. I asked her to please bring as many bottles of water with her as she could.

Maybe it was because so many people I know had spontaneously and unhesitatingly come forward to help, or maybe it was because the farmers gathered there were so decent and dignified or maybe it was because a young mother and her child had travelled across town to give out bottles of water to weary farmers heading back to wherever they had come, the thought came to me that maybe, just maybe, the soul of India is intact, after all.

And maybe, just maybe, as the signboard on the church bordering the rally said, “Blessed are the humble and the poor, for they shall inherit the earth.”

Rohit Kumar is an educator with a background in Positive Psychology and Psychometrics. He works with high school students on emotional intelligence and adolescence issues and helps to make schools bullying-free zones.