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Meet Sonu Sood of Australia
Updated On: 02 August, 2020 07:38 AM IST | Mumbai | Prutha Bhosle
If you thought no one could beat Sonu Sood for his role in sending thousands of migrants home, meet an Australian expat who has helped 2,000 people reach Melbourne from India
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Simon Quinn, a 32-year-old PhD student from Australia, has been studying Sanskrit in India since 2017
With a one-way ticket in hand, Australian couple Chloe Dimopoulos and Ben Munro arrived in India on March 12, hoping to travel the country, and then the world. When the recent graduates reached Jaipur, Chloe was overcome by a fever, bodyache and chills. On March 16, they were in a public hospital trying to get a COVID-19 test. What they thought would be a two-day-long wait for results, turned into a harrowing experience that lasted three weeks. "There was hostility towards foreigners at the time. The hospital staff refused to let the couple leave. Interestingly, they had tested negative twice. It was unfair to confine them," remembers Simon Quinn, an Australian expat living in India since 2017. It all went south from there after Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a nationwide lockdown on March 24, to halt the spread of the Coronavirus infection. "And, there must have been about 20,000 more people stranded in different corners of India, desperate to return to Melbourne. I wanted to help them," Simon, 32, adds.
When you think of someone to arrange an airlift of thousands stuck in a foreign country, Simon will not be your first choice. But then again, the year 2020 is full of surprises. Kindness is coming from the most unexpected places. "Anxious messages started flooding a chat forum that I am part of, dedicated to Aussies travelling in India. Some wanted urgent medication and supplies, others wanted to get a COVID test, few were cast away in remote areas." Simon, a PhD student living in Gurgaon, is studying Sanskrit at Delhi's Rashtriya Sanskrit Sansthan. Being married to an Indian woman meant he had hands-on training in Hindi; he also teaches English on the side. Crisis management, however, has never been his subject of interest. "While the governments of other countries had started measures to bring back their people, the Australian government was seemingly struggling. The Australian High Commission in Delhi was negotiating with airlines, but that was not going too well. Even if they did manage to get people on the flight, the tickets were going to be very expensive. This is the problem with the geography—if you have to go to Europe, you can fly directly with one crew."
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