Global Sisters Report invited its sister columnists in India to share their experiences of how the terrible outbreak of COVID-19 has affected their country in the last few months. Six sisters wrote special columns, compiled below, describing their experiences and what it is like on the ground as health workers, as tribal citizens, as compassionate caregivers and as victims of the virus themselves.
Almost all calls and messages shock us with news of death, calls of requests and help, with crying and sobbing. We are tired of responding, “Rest in peace,” and exhorting friends to stay home, stay safe, take care, prayers assured! Everywhere, there is breathlessness, helplessness, mourning, sinking hopes and prevailing despair.
People are being treated by the roadsides, in parks and makeshift hospitals with saline bottles hanging on the trunks and branches of trees. The scarcity of medical facilities is scandalous to us; in this tug of war between life and death, death seems to be stronger, swallowing lives. I was stunned to see on the TV news a woman giving oxygen to her infected husband, mouth to mouth. Ultimately, he died in a car outside the hospital from lack of a ventilator and hospital bed.
. Five priests died in the state of Gujarat in 15 hours. Two sisters of the same congregation, both on the leadership team, died of COVID-19 in two days in the same hospital. I was broken because I had worked with both of them.
One of our kitchen staff lost her husband and daughter on the same day. A parishioner died the day before her daughter. A wife died, but the husband in the ICU does not know it.
As a tribal woman religious, I am saddened that we have lost many young tribal scholars and intellectuals in the pandemic, mainly from Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Gujarat and Odisha.
I managed to talk to the members of a family affected by COVID-19 in my village in Jharkhand. They said: “Sister, we can’t afford to go to hospital as we are poor. We will die of this virus at our home itself. For us, no medicines are available at an affordable price. We don’t have single rooms in our homes to be quarantined.”
It is in this context that I, as a Catholic and religious, am pondering how to revive hope in people who trust in the divine power and existence of God and how to help people to deepen their faith in the Lord.
How and where to get courage and strength? Sometimes, like Jesus’ apostles, I ask: “Where are you, Lord? Why have you forsaken the world and me? Lord, come to save our world and family. ‘Lord, save us. We are perishing’ “ (Matthew 8:25).
But maybe those are the wrong questions. Now, I am asking, “Lord, how are you present to us amid this pandemic reality?” In my spiritual attempt to protect my world from COVID-19, I find that Psalm 91 is helpful in giving me faith.
I have seen people helping enemies; oxygen cylinders being distributed thanks to generous help from several different countries; those who are well praying for the sick. Many families who did not pray are now on their knees, praying with great trust and faith; many are finding solace in online Masses, the divine mercy rosary, and adoration. I composed a Hindi hymn for the intercession of Mother Mary Bernadette, our founder, who served during the cholera epidemic of 1895.
Let us “be positive but test negative.”