LUCKNOW, India (AP) – Two months ago Radha Gobindo Pramanik and his wife threw a party to celebrate their daughter’s pregnancy and the upcoming birth of their long-awaited grandchild. They were so happy that they paid little attention to his wife’s cough.
It’s an oversight that may forever haunt him. Within days, his wife, his daughter and his unborn grandchild were all dead, among the tens of thousands killed as the coronavirus ravaged India in April and May.
“Everyone whom I loved the most has left me,” the 71-year-old said on a recent night as a Hindu priest chanted mantras and performed a ritual for the dead at his home in the northern city of Lucknow. “I am left alone in this world now.”
As India emerges from its darkest days of the pandemic, families across the country are grieving all that they’ve lost and are left wondering if more could have been done to avoid this tragedy.
There are also signs that the virus is not done devastating India’s families because even as new infections are down, thousands are still dying each day and the illness is believed to be spreading undetected in areas without access to testing.