THEY GIVE US HOPE

As the country coped with the trauma of a second COVID wave, a new set of citizen heroes came to its rescue

No one, it seemed, had warned us about the second COVID wave. A spike in the number of infections set some alarm bells ringing in March, but none were loud enough to prepare us for the devastation we saw barely a month later. As hospital beds and oxygen became scarce, our very Indian rules of privilege ceased to apply. COVID-19 was, suddenly, the great leveller. Regardless of our position on the ladders of caste and class, we all fought hard to access critical healthcare. We gasped together. We were all desperate.

Governments in the country, at the levels of both centre and state, were visibly unprepared. Their complacency created a vacuum.

While some COVID patients needed ambulances and medicine, there were more who, by then, needed hearses. Amidst the ensuing chaos, most of us were left with little idea about which number to call, where to go and what to do. Finally, it was some brave, committed and selfless individuals who stepped in to create that support system. Here were ordinary Indians showing extraordinary courage.

Helping shore up India’s frontlines were volunteers and warriors who often put themselves in harm’s way just so that they could alleviate distress. Social worker Versha Verma, for instance, transformed a moment of great personal loss into an opportunity to serve her city of Lucknow: “I lost my best friend to COVID in mid-April. I waited at Ram Manohar Lohia Hospital with her body for four hours. No middle-class family could afford the ₹10,000 to ₹15,000 that drivers were charging. The crematorium was only four km away.”