On March 23, 2020, the Indian government imposed the COVID-19 lockdown. Everything stopped. No food for sale, no transportation available, no services provided and no one was supposed to drive. It was a total shutdown. At that time, the school was at capacity with 179 students staying at the facility. The staff quickly realized the problem was how to provide food for almost 200 people with no businesses open and no one allowed on the roads. The parents who lived out of town could not drive to Padhar to pick their children up! Only emergency vehicles were allowed on the roads. So for 3 months the school was at capacity, trying to work within the system to get permission to travel to supply food for the children.
Now, it just so happened that the school had acquired an old broken-down ambulance from the hospital that they fixed and were using to transport the kids, so they finally got permission to get supplies and food, but only if they used the old ambulance! Thankfully someone with some car repair skills had rescued the old ambulance many years ago. Who knew it would be so helpful?