Habi Patel reflects on the devastating situation unfolding in India and how it is personally affecting her family.
My family lost 3 people in as many days this bank holiday weekend, in the rural villages of India, whilst our screens were showing the chilling details of Covid-19 putting India's healthcare system into chaos.
Babu was 63 when he passed away in Bharuch's 'Patel Welfare Hospital' on Friday morning, before the hospital, including the Covid wing, was damaged in a fire that same evening caused by an explosion, killing 18. Babu Nana was my nan's youngest brother. Bharuch is my parent's home city, 20 minutes away from the village in which they were born, and the hospital had been providing free healthcare.
Then there's Nilufer. She was 37 years old when she passed away from Covid on Saturday, leaving behind her three children, the eldest of whom is 12. Her husband who was making ends meet is the sole breadwinner dealing with the grief of losing his wife and mother of his children. Nilufer is my father's first cousin's daughter.
Hamida is in her late 50s. She lives in a village in Gujarat, India and she lost her husband on Sunday to Covid. Her family had been barely managing, reliant on support from her brother and sister-in-law, but she lost her sister-in-law to Covid last year and her brother had packed up his life of 67 years and everything he knew in India to join his children in the UK. Hamida is now the responsibility of her son, and his young family. Hamida is my uncle's sister.
We are leaving so many very very behind
The devastating reports we are getting of the lack of oxygen, hospital beds and vaccines in Delhi is the periscope to the impact that Covid is having on rural communities, parts of which were already ridden with abject poverty before the pandemic. I have been hearing of communities in villages surrounding Bharuch burying 9 to 10 of their dead every day for the last few weeks. The officially reported numbers simply don't stack up.
I feel their grief but what I feel even more is the repercussive consequences it can reap for those who are left behind, dealing not just with their grief but left with worries of how they will fend for themselves, who will look after them and how will they provide. Whilst we are waiting patiently in anticipation of our new-found freedoms here at home – and rightly so – we are leaving so many very very behind. There is a shameful irony in the vaccination manufacturing centre of the world having contributed to the recent success of our own war on Covid and having failed its own population in India so miserably. I would encourage you all to read a recent hard-hitting but compelling account by Arundhati Roy: We are witnessing a crime against humanity.
The pandemic has polarised the haves and the have nots
No two person's personal journey since the pandemic began is the same and it has thrown its challenges at all of us. In spite of it all, it's the first time in the last year when I've felt utterly helpless, and angry that we're here. The pandemic has polarised the haves and the have nots further than pre-Covid-19. This is a particularly painful moment in that journey for Indian diaspora communities like my own who have contributed to India's progress by supporting their families and communities in India, only to see that progress eroded by what could have been preventable. Ramadan is the month of charitable giving as well as fasting. Where we've sponsored extended family members in India through higher education in the past, as a way of hoping to break the poverty trap, this year, it's different. We're not building, we're just trying to plug the gap for the basics before it falls through the floor – food, necessary healthcare and modest financial provision.
I'm not writing this to offer solutions, merely to offer a note of solidarity to colleagues with families overseas, wherever that may be, in India or elsewhere, who are living through the disproportionate impact of Covid on their communities and to shine a light on the lived reality of this. Things will get better. They must.
Related links:
Vaccine-sharing must happen globally
COVID-19 Crisis In India: Donate now
Blog: Four things you didn't know about vaccines
