We shall overcome one day
My phone starts beeping. It’s the Facebook alumni group from my Indian university. Someone is asking for a ventilator bed in Bangalore.
Usually, I get less than ten posts a day with folks asking for tips on jobs, searching for contacts at specific firms, talking about interviews. But like a summer day being overpowered by a dark storm, the fury in the air is quietly apparent. If you listen closely, you can hear it coming.
Within minutes, there’s another post asking for ventilator bed in Delhi. Then someone wants Oxygen in Mumbai. Yet another is looking for vials of remdesivir in Jaipur.
It builds like a tsunami through the ocean, each post feeding on another until the screams hit a crescendo. Every post has a phone number. Every post says it’s urgent. In ordinary times, people don’t share their phone numbers on social media.
These are not ordinary times.
There are accounts I follow on Twitter for cricket conversations. The IPL is still on, but no one is talking about cricket. One of them retweets a video asking: Do you know if she got help?
I click on the video. There’s a girl with a medical mask on her face. As she faces the phone camera through her black round spectacles, you can see the fear in her eyes. Her voice is timid.
Please help me, she says. Her parents are Covid positive and her Mum is low on Oxygen. Her grandparents are bedridden. She has a younger brother. There is no one here to help. Can you help me? Please help me.
I click across to the account details. It’s a new account, all her tweets are asking for help. I click back to the post and scroll to the replies.
There’s a recent reply from her. She’s in an ambulance with her mother.
I realize I have been holding my breath.
Vikram bhai posts on Facebook: My mother is no more.
My Twitter timeline is a warzone. My Facebook feed is a warzone. The messages keep on coming, a single topic that drowns everything else.
Hospital bed. Ventilator. Urgent. ICU. Urgent. Oxygen. Help. Please call. Ventilator. Urgent. Help.
Different people, the same words. Repeated over and over and over.
Someone on LinkedIn expresses their disgust at the Indian stock market going up. The markets are supposedly forward looking, which means they predict that things will be back to normal soon enough.
Tell that to Vikram bhai. He’s an old friend, a few years older than me, and I played tennis with him when I was a kid. When he thwacked a ball with his forehand, it stayed hit. He’s uploaded an old pic where his Mum is putting a teeka on his forehead. The comments on the post are never ending.
I go back to the profile of the girl with the video. Strangers asking if her Mum is okay. No replies.
There’s news of my relatives falling ill. I hear about them from my parents and sister, all of them back in India. We pray and we hope. We talk about being very careful and then we deliberately talk about other things. My Dad says things are “very very bad.” He’s not someone prone to exaggeration.
It’s become a daily ritual, to go back to check for new tweets from that girl. I don’t know her, I don’t know why I’m scrolling through her timeline repeatedly. I watch the video again. Her voice breaks somewhat. I hope her Mum is okay.
They say times like these bring out the best in people. My social media feed is fighting back. Folks have organized their own lists of where hospital beds are available, who can supply oxygen concentrators, what to look for on an oxymeter. Out of nowhere, private websites and helpline phone numbers have come up trying to inform people what they should do, who they should call, where they should go. When no one else can help, you have to help yourself.
There’s a reply on that girl’s video.
“Mum left us and went away,” it says.
I’m logged in to work when I read this on my phone. I step away and open the door to the balcony. The breeze is gentle. The sun is setting.
They say bad news never travels alone. Is that why I feel a knot in my gut the next day? When that WhatsApp message lands on my phone, I’m almost expecting it. It’s a group with friends I grew up playing tennis with.
The breeze is gentle. The sun is setting.
Vikram bhai is no longer with us. Both his parents succumbed to Covid last week as well. His face pops up in front of my eyes. He’s my doubles partner, laughing and high-fiving after we’ve just won a point. I remember his Facebook posts, the pics he shared of his wife and daughter last month. I can’t bring myself to ask about them.
Later that night I send him a message, one that I know he’ll never read. I tell him to reserve a tennis court up there and we’ll play when we meet again.
Om Shanti.
The girl has tweeted once more. She needs another ambulance. Can anyone help?
We shall overcome. One day.
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The names in this article have been changed to respect privacy. If you’d like to help your friends in India, here’s a list of organizations where you can contribute.
