It was a triumphant feeling to have left India Covid-free in June, when the virus was wreaking havoc across the Indian map. It wasn’t because Charlie and I had been living in a cave; rather, we had taken every precaution and care to not catch it.
My family is by no means strangers to Covid. We have dealt with its challenges very personally and closely. In the first wave my mom contracted it from our family chef, who picked it up during one of many hospital visits he had to make. It was quite a feat to keep these family members comfortable and well cared for. Even more challenging was the task of keeping the remaining household safe. We succeeded and were proud to have endured.
The second wave was not without its tragedy for my family. We lost two of our closest and most precious members, Abha Aunty and Ajay Uncle. Their loss within days of each other brought home the ugly and vicious nature of this disease. Like parents to my siblings and me, these two had seen us through the arc of our lives, and in the absence of Papa, it was Ajay Uncle who often played that role. And now we were left bereft of that presence too. Then we lost Auntie Prabha, the great gynecologist of Delhi who brought my siblings and me into this world and was also at our side through every noteworthy moment of our lives. These three deaths at the hand of Covid will remain stark reminders for us to appreciate the heft and might of this deadly disease.
My mother and I flew into New York City early this summer with certificates that proved we were Covid-free, but nobody checked, nobody questioned; we weren’t asked to show them. We were coming from India, the land of Delta, and there was no requirement for us to be tested when we arrived. As I settled in Manhattan, I realized how the richest nation in the world was fooling itself into believing we were post-Covid. Everywhere I saw people without masks—in buildings, in streets, in cars. Very soon I realized that America is a country that isn’t paying attention to its own needs and which thinks of itself as too strong to be bothered by such small things that the rest of the world is having to face. But a pandemic is a pandemic because it affects universally. It doesn’t care if you’re rich or poor, a third-world nation or a first-world nation. It affects you no matter what, no matter who.
I am a man of two countries. When I am in America, I consider myself an American. When I am in India, an Indian. I am proud to be from both New Delhi and New York.
In India, as an Indian son and brother, I became an Indian caregiver when my mother and my brother were struck with Covid. They were isolated but not quite separated. I and the other members of the household were able to care for them, make them feel connected to the world, feed them beautiful food. They felt that they were loved and provided for. As Indians, we instinctively and collectively heal each other.
In America, as an American son and brother, I found myself thinking like an American and becoming an American patient. Here I was, with a loving, caring family, but I quarantined myself to a hotel room. It was a rather lonely moment, and I felt self-pity even though I was living in luxury in the hotel. In that room I realized how tough life is in the US. How quickly we are left alone here, how quickly we are made to feel helpless and hopeless and hapless.
Lying in the hotel in Westchester, I felt like the last emperor of mogul India, Badadur Shah Zafar, who was sent to solitary confinement in the nation of Burma, away from his own nation and country. My family cared for me as well as I would let them. My mother and my sister would come visit me—they sat in the car while I sat outside the hotel. They brought me food and caring every minute my American mindset would allow it.
I realized in those moments how different the approach to healing and suffering and malady is in our two nations, and I was homesick. Not for a place, but for a way of being. I was homesick for Indian warmth, Indian hospitality, Indian connectedness. I was broken by this disease, and I was alone.
In the end, what saved me through the loneliness of quarantine was being connected to my extended big fat Indian family through the WhatsApp group that we have. Songs sung for me, poems written for me, messages of love, care, and nourishment sent my way. This was the healing and curing that brought me back to the mindset of those willing to fight this deadly battle. I came victorious out of Covid with monoclonal antibodies and ready to brave the challenges of life, living and the surgery I had to face still.
In life we must have one way of living, loving, caring, and thinking. One set of values that are unshakable that we are never too far from. India shows me the beauty of the feminine, America the resolute power of the brute. I have learned to combine the strength of the brute and the softness and maternalism of Mother India, and together they give me the ability to live life never too lost, never too strong, but always in the middle, loving and surviving.
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