After two weeks of resorting to manual foot rubs, herbal oil, and painkillers for their joint ache and leg pain, protesting farmers at Singhu border were on Friday introduced to free ten-minute massage sessions with 25 foot massagers installed at the protest site.
The 25 massagers that were set up at the protest site was introduced by Khalsa Aid, a non-government organisation. The facility is free for all protesters, and all they need to do is get a token number and then wait their turn. “Our volunteers at Tikri protest site said that several of them were offering manual foot rubs to the farmers. This is what prompted us to arrange for these massagers. We have multiple ongoing projects and already had five such foot massagers which are used during events like kanwar yatra or amarnath yatras,” said Amarpreet Singh, Khalsa Aid’s director in India.
Mandeep Kaur, 50, a nurse from Lehra Bet village in Ferozpur district, has been at Singhu border for a week now, protesting with her family. “The constant movement around the protest site and the winter cold can often leave old people with pain in their leg beside severe backache. The massage session helped in comforting me and I will ask my son to buy me these,” she said.Throughout the day, farmers lined up outside the tent with their allotted tokens to get the “electric massage” after word spread around the protest site. Till Friday evening, more than 350 farmers had availed of the services which started at 8am on Friday.
Jagdiv Singh, 60, a resident of Amritsar, said, “Getting inside the trolleys and climbing down from them or even sitting for long hours has caused us extreme backache and joint-ache. Other farmers around our trolley told me about the foot massagers, so I came here to try it. Till now, I had been relying on massages given by other younger farmers at the spot,” he said.Two friends – Saab Singh, 63, and Lakhi Ram, 80 – from the Mundlana village in Sonipat district walked out of the enclosure smiling on Friday evening. “Every day, we walk from our trolleys to the stage area which is around 2km away. Sometimes, we do these trips twice a day. As a result, we were left with terrible pain. But the 10-minute massage session has helped. We will come back tomorrow as well,” said Singh.
