Rahul Gupta will never forget the last day of February in 2022 because it was when he stood for 18 hours in sub-zero temperature, braving the snow with 26 of his friends, none of them with much to eat or drink. The 20-year-old was among the 1,600 students who arrived by buses and stood in long queues, separately for men and women, waiting to be allowed to cross over the Romania border by the Ukraine army. “We had the options of going to Hungary, Poland or Romania. We heard the Ukraine army is harassing students in Poland because they [the Ukraine army] are unable to fight the Russian army. So we came to Bucharest,” Mr. Gupta said.
His voice sounded shaky despite the poor connection. He spoke from a shelter home in the Romanian capital, where hundreds of Indian students wait eagerly to go home. “I just experienced the worst night of my life. We had to stand for hours. We were allowed to cross the border only in batches of 30 students released every half-an-hour. They gave us pork and beef sandwiches but most of us only ate the bread.. The water we were carrying got over soon and there was no place to refill. We were all supporting each other and sat on the luggage by turns. There were girls who fainted because they were on their period and were in a lot of pain but had to stand endlessly in that weather. It was hell for all of us. We got separated from our friends.. The ordeal is still not over because I don’t know when I will be able to go back home. There has been no formal communication about the flight scheduled to leave in a few hours, so we don’t know who can make it [on this flight],” he said on a Whatsapp call.
Mr. Gupta, originally from Hyderabad, went to Ukraine in 2019 as an MBBS student of the Vinnitsa National Medical University. He has three more years left to complete his course. When the war broke out, all the students in his university started leaving. Mr. Gupta, along with his friends, boarded a bus at 7 p.m. and reached the Romania border at midnight. In a worried voice, he explained that the Ukraine army shot two rounds into the air in an area with trucks and vehicles, which also led to chaos. “No one is to be blamed. The situation is really bad,” he said. The shelter home in which he is put up has provided him and others like him with a mattress, food, tea and coffee, fruits, and other necessities. It’s about 25 km away from the airport. Mr. Gupta said some of his friends were in another shelter home 20 minutes away from the border. He desperately hopes he will make home it on the next flight.
