Ramya Vivek
I couldn’t take my eyes off the picture. Two minutes later, I couldn’t take my thoughts off it. The image just didn’t go away from my mind, even after two days.
A lady in her middle age, who wasn’t COVID infected, was photographed outside Agra Government hospital. She was seen giving CPR, trying to revive her COVID infected husband in a parked auto rickshaw.
Before she reached the place that would eventually suck her off her happiness and faith, she had knocked on the doors of atleast three private hospitals and was turned down due to the non-availability of hospitals beds.
She sat there as an epitome of selflessness, not pausing a single moment thinking about her own safety. Though her eyes watered constantly due to the helplessness of the situation, she tried breathing her life into the person she loved with all her heart.
She would have known in her racing heart that it was a lost battle. That she wouldn’t be able to keep the strenuous effort up for hours. Yet she tried without giving up. In the end, as her man breathed his last, the woman lost her battle too.
Yes, she lost the battle to bring her man back from the death trap, to seize the life of her man from the clutches of the viral demon. Battling negligence, she lost against the failure of the pathetic governance, even after giving her all.
I am sure, there wouldn’t be a single person who wouldn’t have cried looking at the picture of the lady cradling her husband on her lap, as he gave up the battle to hold on to his dear life.
There still are so many questions plaguing my mind.
What have we come down to?
Why hadn’t we prepared and equipped ourselves for the second wave?
We had ample time in our hands. Did no one, medical experts or leaders, absolutely no one, predict the severity of this situation?
Like how the photograph of the malnutrition starving child and the vulture ready to pounce on her sensing death, became the rage, reminding us of the adversity of the Sudan famine, this photograph would forever remind us of our system failure.
Years from now, we would have successfully come out of this catastrophe, living our life normally.
Years from now, all these uncertainties and anxieties would have been the topic of the past, forgotten amidst the other important things in our lives.
Yet, years from now, these two years would still remain as a remembrance of the overall Indian system’s failure to combat the unseen enemy! A grave reminder to many families who had lost their loved ones in a jiffy!
We definitely aren’t okay.
Accept it, we definitely aren’t prepared.
We definitely aren’t the model nation, the world had appreciated and looked upto, who had successfully won over COVID.
No! I am neither pointing fingers nor blaming anyone in particular!
It is the collective failure of the entire system – the politicians giving unwanted importance to election campaigns instead of curbing the situation going out of hand, the rich people who bribed their way claiming hospital beds and medicines, the middle men who made use of every opportunity to earn money by selling them in the black market and the general public who carelessly flouted every rule.
My legs give out and my heart cries out for the lost lives that may not have committed any sin other than living in this world.
I hope there is some respite from all these, real soon.
We could only hope and pray. What else we could do now!
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