Blessen Tom was born in India and moved to New Zealand four years ago. He is watching the Covid crisis unfolding in his homeland with both despair and anger.
Covid-19 is suffocating India. Yesterday, the daily infection rate reached yet another new global high of 379,257 cases.
That's the highest in the world and the worst numbers since the beginning of the pandemic.
As its leaders and health workers try their best to tackle the situation there, lots of us living here are watching on, in great pain. Because I love my country, and this is heart-breaking to witness.
The messages for help started arriving early last month and over the last the two weeks, they became more and more frequent.
Facebook and WhatsApp messages are being forwarded to me from people that I don’t even know asking for details about availability of hospital beds and for money so that they can treat their nearest and dearest.
The hardest to read are from people asking me for help getting oxygen tanks so that their loved ones can breathe.
I was born in Kerala and came to Aotearoa four years ago. While I’m really proud to call this country my new home, I still have strong ties with India.
My parents, relatives and friends are still there.
I’ve spent many hours talking to my friends from my safe Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland home, consoling them and trying to help them navigate through this terrible time.
Weddings have been cancelled, jobs have disappeared - my people are struggling to breathe.
The other day my mom called me in desperation - she'd got turned away from her vaccine station because they had none. She was queuing with hundreds of others waiting for their jab and by the time she was in front, she couldn’t get it because they ran out of vaccines.
My mom is hurting - and there's nothing I can do. My mother country is bleeding and I don't know how to stop it.
Fortunately, almost everyone I know can afford medical treatment. But they are the lucky ones.
There are millions who cannot afford to save their loved ones, they're reliant on a Government health system that's overwhelmed.
Many can't even get to a hospital, instead they have to watch their loved ones losing their lives in front of their eyes because they can’t breathe.
Now, who’s to blame? Is it the Prime Minister who declared that “India has saved the world from disaster” and then welcomed around 3 million devotees to the Kumbh Mela, a religious festival, openly flouting Covid protocols?
Or is it the health minister of the country who proclaimed “the situation is under control" when the country had more than 100,000 positive cases a day and didn’t do anything about it?
Or is it the leaders who asked their followers to get out and about assuring them that the god will protect them from Covid? And what about the political rallies?
“I have never seen such huge crowds at a rally.” Modi said in West Bengal on April 17 - while his country saw 200,000 Covid positive infections. Finally, the IPL cricket – who are you playing for?
The situation in India is dire. Hospitals are full. Crematoriums in Delhi have run out of firewood.
The Forest department has granted permission to chop nearly 200 standing dead or dry trees for the wood for cremations.
Oxygen is the newest currency in India and the hidden market is booming. Senior advocates, politicians and journalists are on Twitter pleading for hospital beds and oxygen cylinders.
If Delhi is falling down, what will happen to the villages in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh?
Tens of millions of people are travelling from the city to their villages carrying the virus with them, traumatised by the memories of a national lockdown by Modi in 2020.
It was the strictest lockdown in the world, only giving 4 hours' notice to a country of 1.4 billion. It left migrant workers stranded in cities with no food, no water and transport eventually leading them to walk for hundreds of kilometres by road. Hundreds died on the way.
I'm oscillating between sadness and outrage. Despite being the world’s largest producer of vaccines, India is way behind in its own vaccine campaign.
Fewer than 10% of the Indian population has received their first jab and only 1.7% are fully vaccinated, according to a New York Times database, even when India is producing two vaccines on home soil.
Fortunately, the world has heard India’s distress call. Oxygen tanks and generators and other supplies are being transported from Saudi Arabia, France and other countries.
The Biden administration in the US has agreed to send raw materials for the vaccine and New Zealand has donated $1 million to the Red Cross in India.
But will it be enough?
I'm scared for my family and for my country. I don’t know when I can go to India to visit my parents or friends.
Many are stuck in limbo since the temporary flight ban, which has now ended up but been replaced by strict restrictions.
Some of us have been separated from our families for more than a year.
But for those of us in Aotearoa, and countless Indians living in the other parts of the world, we can only watch, listen and cry.
* Blessen Tom is a producer for TVNZ's Fair Go programme.
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