Four years ago, the woman, now in her late fifties, had wandered away from her village in Ratnagiri district. Suffering from mental illness, she travelled over 1,000 km into Tamil Nadu, without knowing where she was going. There she lived the life of a destitute. On Thursday, in the most unlikely circumstances, the Covid-19 pandemic and the subsequent lockdown reunited her with her two children in Chennai. A month ago, junior railway engineer Shyam Meena first spotted her alone at the Arokkonam railway station, a small town 70 km west of Chennai. She was healthy but dishevelled, he says, and had spent three-four days at the railway station. “We first thought she had parted with her family...
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