New Delhi: It was almost as if destiny led him to a Guwahati house where he found friendship and warmth many thousand miles away from his home in Italy, says Giovanni Allegrini who is living out his days in lockdown with an Assamese family he now calls his own.
It has been 20 days since the 23-year-old Italian tourist found himself in Guwahati, quite by accident.
He is hoping to extend his stay with the Sharmas, content to eat local food and plant vegetables to tide the family through the coronavirus crisis.
Allegrini, who has been in India since February 2 and has visited several places in Maharashtra, Goa, Karnataka and Chhattisgarh, reached Guwahati railway station from Patna on March 18.
The lockdown hadn’t come into effect but the fear of the disease was real. He tried in vain to book a hotel. He wanted to stay in the railway retiring room but was not allowed to do so. He put out some requests about couch-surfing but no one accepted.
Someone even told him he could spend the night in a gurdwara but he was not sure how to go about it.
It was then that he met Deepak Sharma, a retired bank official, who brought him home and offered him a room in his house.
Sharma said he informed the DGP office about Allegrini’s stay and also submitted his passport and visa copies to the nearest police station.
“It was evening when I saw him talking to some people. He was looking for hotels but they denied him accommodation,” Sharma told PTI over the phone.
Allegrini said his decision to go to Assam was as random as his meeting with Sharma. He reached Guwahati after a 48-hour train journey and lots of requests for couch-surfing and hotel websites.
He said perhaps he was destined to stay at Sharma’s place. “I wasn’t worried, I never plan anything while travelling and everything has gone well. I love to take risks. It’s exciting,” he said.
“He (Sharma) was the only one in Guwahati to give me shelter when I somehow, luckily, reached there right before the lockdown.”
When Sharma took Allegrini home, his wife and neighbours were more than a little apprehensive. The young man did not just have an extended travel history but was also from Italy, which has more 1,35,000 cases and over 14,500 fatalities. But over the days, things changed.
Sharma said his family is now having a great time with Allegrini. “I love the Sharma family. It feels like I’m a part of it, a son. Mum and dad are lovely and my brother (Sharma’s son) is too. We do so many activities together: we’re currently working on the land in front of the house and planting vegetables, just to make sure we’ll have enough food throughout this crisis,” Allegrini told PTI.
He addresses Sharma as Deepak and his wife as Mum and has become very fond of Assamese food. (PTI)
