'Death all around': bereaved Indians search for solace amid pandemic as coronavirus rages on

Anushree Pandey lost her brother to Covid-19 two weeks ago. But the 35-year-old has had no time to process her grief, what with the exhaustion of searching for hospital beds and oxygen for her elderly parents. She had to arrange her brother's funeral, and could not even hug him goodbye.

A deadly second wave of coronavirus infections sweeping through India has left almost no one unaffected. With the country recording between 6,000 and 31,000 excess deaths each day, figures fitting with independent epidemiological estimates indicate that 280,000 people have died of Covid-19 in India this year alone.

"These are unprecedented times that we are living in. Its been full of unexpected and sudden changes from job losses and economic troubles to a lack of usual social contact," said Dr N Rangarajan, a leading Chennai-based psychiatrist. "We're grieving for the entire world as it is plunged into uncertainty, and for the loss of our pre-pandemic lives."

Do you have questions about the biggest topics and trends from around the world? Get the answers with SCMP Knowledge, our new platform of curated content with explainers, FAQs, analyses and infographics brought to you by our award-winning team.

Even children have been affected, Rangarajan said, amid "a general sense of hopelessness with death all around". "To add to this the death of a loved one, is grief that most people don't even have the space or energy to process," he said.

As the pandemic rages on, even the process of mourning has become challenging, Rangarajan said, "because of the lack of the usual support of last rites and ceremonies that are an integral part of the Indian cultural system" - encompassing the gathering together of friends and relatives, and the sharing of food, as part of a two-week grieving process to help the bereaved find closure.

"Because of social distancing and online funerals and ceremonies being streamed, the nuances of an intimate grieving process are taken away. The pandemic has separated people when they need each other the most, and complicated the trajectory of grief," he said.

In the absence of physical outlets to grieve, many have turned to virtual communities, helplines and tribute sites. Pallium India, a Thiruvananthapuram-based NGO, set up a national helpline called Sukh-Dukh to provide the grieving families of Covid-19 victims with emotional support and help them cope with their loss. Each caller is provided with three, free 45-minute sessions.

Launched in October, the Sukh-Dukh helpline service is available in eight of India's most spoken languages, including English, with a team comprising trained, experienced psychologists and counsellors to provide emotional support.

"If economic loss and loss of opportunities were the result of the first wave, I would say losing friends and family to Covid is the scary glaring effect of the second wave. We come across many calls from victims, friends and relatives of Covid infected," said Dr Lekshmi Premanand from the helpline.

"In the present scenario a relatively healthy person gets detected with Covid, is moved to hospital, there may or may not be proper communication since then, and the family gets the news that the person is no more. There are no proper goodbyes, or last hug or kiss. Funerals are performed under Covid protocols. Accepting and overcoming the unnatural situation is very hard."

Dr Rajani Jagtap, chief medical officer at Mumbai's SVD Savarkar Hospital lost her husband to Covid-19 after both had tested positive. In the aftermath, she and her clinical psychologist friend Divya Andar started a support group called Staying Alive that helps others with the grieving process by providing psychological counselling, as well as legal help, through virtual group meetings.

It can be even harder for those living abroad who lose a loved one to process their grief because of the distance and restrictions on international travel.

Richa Kumar found herself in this unfortunate position when her father and aunt in Coimbatore died from Covid-19. The 50-year-old, who lives abroad, was able to join a videoconference call one week later with some of her other relatives and close friends to celebrate her father's life and take part in a small ritual - but has mostly had to be content with her memories of him.

A woman cries over the body of her husband, who died from Covid-19, inside an ambulance at a crematorium ground in New Delhi. File photo: Reuters

"Living away from India teaches many lessons. The one important lesson that I have learnt is that there is a time limit on everything, including grief," she said. "I had to immerse myself in mundane chores around me when I lost two loved family members. It's a reminder of how ephemeral life is."

Others who have lost loved ones have turned to online portals such as Tributes.in to share eulogies for their deceased relatives, including pictures and poems, free of charge.

Abhishek Khaitan from Guwahati said sharing such stories online helped lessen his family's feelings of grief. "No one from our family could attend the funeral of my father and at that point the condolence messages and tributes we could receive on the tribute page was a solace for our family," he said.

Having helped people find hospital beds, oxygen and medicines earlier in the pandemic, mountaineer and engineer Satyarup Siddhanta decided to set up an online memorial to commemorate Indians who have died from Covid-19 with help from a doctor friend. The National Covid Memorial allows people to light a virtual candle, or leave a note for their loved ones.

"Initially people came out with their negative emotions of frustration, inability to help their loved ones, but I worked with them to make them understand that this was meant to be a place of peace and closure where they could celebrate the lives of their loved ones with happy memories," said Siddhanta, 38.

Abhishek Kumar Dubey's message to his best friend Gopa Banerjee is typical of the sort of notes now left on the site. In it, he says he passed the entrance exam for a PhD programme at the Indian Institutes of Technology "as you always wanted. I practise boxing and play badminton, but I miss you."

Dr Kamna Chhibber, a clinical psychologist at Fortis Healthcare in New Delhi, emphasised the importance of maintaining connections with fellow survivors to help with the grieving process.

"It is important to allow yourself to go through the emotional and cognitive experiences, embrace them and accept them, while also attempting to remind yourself to keep finding a way to stay connected with people around you at least virtually, as well as maintaining some semblance of routines during these times," she said.

"Isolating, going into a shell and disengaging from activities would make the process more difficult."

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

Copyright (c) 2021. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.