As coronavirus rips through India, diaspora struggles to cope with deluge of dark news from homeland
- Many Indian-Americans are wracked with guilt over emerging from more than a year of isolation as relatives overseas struggle to find vaccines and hospital beds
- Compounding the frustration is the struggle by many in the diaspora to convince family in India to abide by social distancing and masking protocols
Sometimes it comes in a barrage of WhatsApp messages first thing in the morning, and sometimes it lands in the middle of the night, as it did for Mohini Gadré‘s father.
A 3am call at his San Francisco Bay Area home let him know that his octogenarian mother – who had tested positive in Mumbai – was too weak to say her morning prayers, setting off a mad scramble to find her the hospital bed where she remained for days.
In the US, where half of the adult population has got at least one Covid-19 shot, the talk has been of reopening, moving forward and healing. But for Indian-Americans, the daily crush of dark news from desh, the homeland, is a stark reminder that the pandemic is far from over.
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“We’re seeing life slowly start to get back to normal in small ways, and you’re feeling like a bit of hope – like with spring. You know that things are improving, it’s been a year,” Gadré, 27, said. “And meanwhile there’s this tinderbox that’s been ignited in India.”