After struggling to get a bed in the ICU at city hospitals with 36 pc oxygen level, and then  battling for life on ventilator and being in a hospital for 40 days, a BEST bus conductor with 29 years of service is back at work. The story of 52-year-old Subhash Todankar shows how tough it was to fight the COVID-19 battle which drained him, his family, physically, financially, and emotionally. Todankar’s employers, the BEST Undertaking and its medical department, stood by him rock solid and brought him back from the jaws of death.

It was May 2020, the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in the city. Local trains and much of public transport had shut and it was the only BEST Undertaking that was running its buses. Todankar was also working and fine till he started getting a body ache around mid-May.