Last modified on Tue 11 May 2021 10.33 EDT
Since the pandemic began, Fatima Ahmed has lost 29 of her family members in India and one in the US to Covid-19.
A few days ago, her uncle died in his car as he was driving back home from a hospital in Hyderabad, a city in southern India. âAll the hospitals were at capacity, so they couldnât take him in,â said Ahmed. âHe pulled over and he called the rest of the family, the khandan â before he passed.â
Each loss has amplified her anger â at the mass crisis unfolding 8,000 miles away, at the shortages of oxygen and vaccines, at the anti-Muslim attacks stoked by Indian officials who have scapegoated religious minorities as the country. Ahmed, an academic and activist based in New Jersey, has asked the Guardian to use a pseudonym for privacy and safety concerns.
How New Yorkers are organizing aid for Indiaâs COVID-19 crisis By Anna Lucente Sterling New York City PUBLISHED 2:30 PM ET May. 05, 2021 PUBLISHED 2:30 PM EDT May. 05, 2021
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Thenmozhi Soundararajanâs days have been consumed the past few weeks with phone calls as early as 3 a.m. from people desperate for help with the COVID-19 crisis in India.
As the executive director and co-founder of Equality Labs, a grassroots organization serving South Asians across the country, sheâs been fielding calls from members across the five boroughs with family members in India.
âWe have so much grief and we ll have more grief to process,â said Soundararajan, who lives in Brooklyn. âThe situation is urgent because people are dying in the middle of the street. People are dying on the way to the hospital. Peopl