The angst of an NRI for her motherland in grip of Covid
For the last month, my heart has broken every single day. It broke when I heard a woman make an emotional appeal to the Indian government to make mercy killing legal because her 81-year-old mother suffering from Covid cannot get a hospital bed. It broke when a friend drove around for four hours to find a hospital bed for a loved one. It broke yet again; another friend’s loved one passed away in an ambulance because no hospital had room for him. It shattered when a friend messaged me that her father contracted Covid at the hospital where he was admitted for another ailment, and then passed away, and now her mother is also infected and on the ventilator.
Lately, my Facebook page reads like the obituary section of a newspaper. Friends share their grief over losing loved ones. News media show the dismal and, frankly heart wrenching, pictures of funeral pyres burning incessantly. And we, those who live so far from the motherland, can only look on with angst and helpless frustration. All we can do is pray and donate in small ways to help alleviate the shortages. And the shortages are many.
We in the US were in a similar state last year when day after day we read and watched as New York, California, Texas and other states’ healthcare systems buckled under the immense and intense strain of Covid infections and mortality. Shocking pictures of bodies lying in vans outside over crammed mortuaries were splashed on the media outlets. Exhausted doctors and nurses, who were running 48-hour shifts, made desperate appeals to the public to stop the cycle of infection by wearing masks and social distancing. We could not believe that the most developed nation in the world had been brought to its knees.
We in California were in lockdown for most part of last year. No parties; tight social bubble; no outsider inside my home in a year; no travel has been our life. We had to learn it the hard way. So, it is harsh to hear from our Indian counterparts to stop judging India, how can we? We went through it ourselves.
Normalcy is slowly returning to these parts of the world, but for us the NRIs, we are still mentally in the grip of the pandemic because our families in India are. It infuriates and enrages me when I see pictures on social media of parties, weddings, religious gatherings, vacations in exotic locales, while the motherland is suffering one of the biggest humanitarian crises.
I salute the Covid warriors, the doctors and nurses who are putting themselves in the frontlines to alleviate people’s suffering; the NGOs that are stepping in where the government has failed; the common citizen who is doing all he can to break the spread. They are the true heroes and the embodiment of John F Kennedy’s words: “Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country.”
As the entire world is rooting for India to beat this virus and come out triumphant, I end with a quote by Leo Tolstoy “There is something in the human spirit that will survive and prevail, there is a tiny and brilliant light burning in the heart of man that will not go out no matter how dark the world becomes.”
AS THE ENTIRE WORLD IS ROOTING FOR INDIA TO BEAT THIS VIRUS AND COME OUT TRIUMPHANT, I SALUTE THE COVID WARRIORS