Indian Americans heartbreak over the homeland

Hailey Branson-Potts, Tribune News Service

There have been such joyful days lately, when the COVID-19 vaccine clinics that Payal Sawhney helps organise at a Hindu temple in Norwalk are bustling, with thousands of people getting shots.

And there have been days when about every phone call and WhatsApp message brings news of yet another friend or relative sick or dead in India.

Sawhney’s mother, in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad, has COVID-19. Her brother does, too. In the city of Gurugram, near New Delhi, her husband’s aunt and uncle tested positive for the coronavirus, as did their son and daughter-in-law, and their two children.

“It feels like being immigrants between two countries; we are on a roller coaster ride, up and down, up and down,” said Sawhney, 44, of Cerritos.

“When it was bad in L.A., it was good in India. We were at peace, at least, knowing our families back home were OK. Now, it’s getting good here and bad there. It’s just a cycle. It’s not ending for us.”

The homeland is overwhelmed with COVID-19, and many Indian Americans in California, home to more than 500,000 Indian-born residents — more than any other state in the US — teeter between hope and despair. They cheer plummeting coronavirus cases and deaths and enjoy loosened pandemic restrictions here, even as they anxiously check on loved ones in India as it faces one of the worst outbreaks in the world.

The outbreak is emotionally disorienting for Indian Americans in Southern California, which dramatically recovered from a winter surge that overwhelmed the healthcare system, with inundated hospitals turning away ambulances and placing patients in hallways and gift shops.

Earlier this year, Charuta Gondhalekar’s family in India checked on her often as cases surged in California. The situation is reversed now. Her brother-in-law, who lives in the United Kingdom, recently tested positive for COVID-19 after visiting family in Pune, a city of some 4 million people in west India, where his father died of the disease.

“I’m scared to check the phone in the mornings,” said Gondhalekar, a 36-year-old software engineer who lives in northwest Orange County.

And yet, at a vaccination clinic last weekend at Sanatan Dharma Temple in Norwalk, she was hopeful. She had just gotten her second Moderna shot. The relief, coupled with her fear for loved ones in India, feels like “going in circles,” she said.

About two dozen members of Artesia City Church — a Christian Reformed congregation in Artesia whose members are mostly of Indian and Pakistani descent — gathered May 7   to do something that was banned in California during the pandemic: sing inside their house of worship.

They sang Psalm 91 in Punjabi: Surely He shall deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the perilous pestilence. It has been a celebratory spring at the church, which, after months of Zoom, resumed full indoor services shortly before Easter. About 90% of the congregation’s 70 or so members have been vaccinated, and they consider it a blessing that none died of COVID-19, said Pastor Eric Sarwar.

“It’s kind of like coming back to life, you know? You are out of the prison from the pandemic, the lockdown, the uncertainty, meeting and singing together as a church,” Sarwar said. “I think these are aspects for which we are glorifying God.”

But it is a tempered joy. Member Joshua Masih calls loved ones in India in the mornings and evenings. He just wants to talk to them, he said. To insist they stay inside.

Church elder Matthew Khokhar, whose large family is mostly in Jammu and Kashmir, said he knows of at least seven relatives who have COVID-19. A 45-year-old cousin died a few days ago. Sarbjit Singh, a Sikh man from Burbank, joined the worship service, where he played a saranda, a stringed folk instrument.

Singh, 58, rejoiced when he got his Pfizer vaccine earlier this year. Now, he spends his days coordinating — through the Khalsa Care Foundation Sikh gurdwara in Pacoima and other organizations — how to send money and supplies overseas.

Two of his uncles and a cousin in New Delhi have died. So have several friends in the Punjab region. A cousin is now in intensive care in the city of Amritsar.

One friend lost his mother to COVID and told Singh that when he went to the crematory in New Delhi, they gave him a token and asked for his information. The token had No. 201 — the number of bodies that had to be burned first. The friend waited over three days to cremate his mother.

“Basically, it has reached every family, everywhere,” Singh said. “People are dying in hospitals. People are dying outside hospitals. People are dying inside their homes. People are dying outside their homes. People are dying on roads. People are dying on streets. People are dying on curbs. People are dying everywhere.”

The next morning, Parth Parikh, a 32-year-old pharmacist, pressed his palms together as a Hindu priest led morning prayers at Sanatan Dharma Temple in Norwalk before giving shots at a vaccination clinic there.

Every Saturday, Parikh, who runs Pico Care Pharmacy in Pico Rivera, works at the clinic, which had given 6,046 shots as of last week, including to the temple’s priest. Parikh speaks Hindi and Gujarati, and the clinics have attracted South Asians who feel most comfortable speaking in their native languages, he said.

Parikh’s parents, who are in their mid-60s, live in Ahmedabad, in western India. They got COVID-19 in November and were sick for more than two weeks.

Back then, the care was better, he said. A hospital provided outpatient services, sending doctors and nurses and IVs to their home. The local government, he said, put a quarantine notice on their door. Police officers checked on them twice a day. “I just had to stay patient,” Parikh said. “You can’t go visit them. You can’t help.”

After they recovered, he said, they were relieved to have gained some natural immunity. But now, some of their friends have reported getting infected twice. They have now gotten both doses of the Covishield vaccine but don’t leave home.His mother’s two sisters tested positive about a month ago. They recovered. But his grandmother’s sister died from the virus a few days ago. Family spent days trying to find a hospital bed, but when they finally found one, it was too late. Now, her husband is hospitalised.

“It almost feels like the whole air is full of virus,” he said. “The expectation is everyone is going to be COVID positive at the end of this whole thing.”

Sawhney, a mental health clinician, and her husband, a physician, get calls at all hours of the day and night, from the US and India.

Sawhney is on a WhatsApp group chat with classmates from her high school in the city of Pune.

“We were all sharing our school-time stories,” she said. “Happy, funny, silly, naughty story. Very soon, our group’s atmosphere changed to one of grief and sorrow. The naughtiness and laughter is gone. We are all just praying for each other.”