A Year Later: Travel Has Become an Emotional Journey
When Rajesh Sharma finally became eligible to receive the Covid vaccine, he jumped into action and added three big events to his calendar: his two vaccine appointments and a request for a four-week leave of absence so that he could visit his aged mother in India, who had been hunkering alone on the seventh floor of her hot and humid apartment in Gurgaon, New Delhi. Exactly two weeks and one day after receiving his second Moderna shot and thus fully immunized, he boarded a plane for an intercontinental flight for the first time in a year and a half.
“I have some loose plans to take my Mom for her annual check-ups and get her Gurkha servant, Bahadur, who’s been in our family for thirty years his two Covidshield vaccines, but mostly I planned on a solo trip just to chill out with my mom. Spend time with her before it’s too late, and I’m filled with regrets. I promised my mom that as soon as I was fully vaccinated I’d return to visit her and for me, it marks the beginning of our return to normalcy,” he said, casting a sidelong glance at the passenger next to him.
COVID-Complicated Graduations: In-person or Virtual?
Her first reaction after receiving the email from the University announcing that commencement would be conducted online was to cry. Across Southern California, larger colleges were announcing plans for in-person graduations—so why not hers?
Then, twenty-two-year-old Anya dried her tears and turned to Instagram, asking: If Vanguard University hosted an in-person graduation, would they attend?
When eighty percent of the respondents said ‘Yes,’ she and two classmates created a GoFundMe account and started selling tickets.
One Year Later: How Two working Moms Are Doing
Priya Sethi walked outside the kitchen’s back door so that the strong salty sea smell blew onto the balcony. The air had a sharp tang that battled for supremacy over the scents of tandoori salmon and smoke (yesterday’s dinner) that blew out from the kitchen.
She couldn’t see the ocean—a row of bungalows identical to her own, some with redwood planter boxes blooming with trumpet-shaped pink petunias blocked her view. She could hear the water though . . . the steady dull thunder of the surf reminding her that it was close, at the edge of Manhattan Beach in Southern California where they’d relocated to.
How Young People Are Preparing to Party in 2021
After Noori Merchant, 23, got her first dose of the Covid-19 vaccine, she reached out to he friends to make travel plans for this summer.
“I’m going crazy. Like, I’m going absolutely nuts,” she says. “I don’t want to get to the point in my life where I’m tied down from family, from work, from whatever, and I didn’t make the most of my youth. So I was the one who was like ‘we need to hang out, we need to hang out.”
Her friends told her they needed to get their shots before they could hang out again. So she’s waiting on that. In the meantime, she’s preparing by practicing her dance moves in a skin-flaunting sequinned top with a silver tulle skirt she hasn’t worn in forever in her Washington D.C. home.
I Want the Pandemic to End /I Don\’t Want the Pandemic to End: Two Perspectives
When Anika Chandok’s Bakersfield middle school shut down last spring and her classes went online, it felt like the beginning of an adventure. “I was in my pajamas, sitting in my comfy chair, “ the thirteen-year-old recalls. “I was texting my friends during class.”
“Then I received my academic progress report. I was an A and B student before the pandemic and now I was failing three classes.” Anika gathers her wits and shakes her head, trying to clear her thoughts.
“The academic slide left my mother in tears. My mom insisted I create to-do lists and moved my workspace into the guest bedroom to pull up my grades.” Pausing to take a sip from her water bottle Anika looks at her therapist Laura Mitchell Moore who gives her an encouraging nod.
The Trauma of Returning to the Work Place
Anil chews on the stub of the pen with which he was writing as he reviews the email from his boss: Since all employees at the healthcare start-up, he worked for had been vaccinated, the corporate bigwigs had decided that a return to the office could safely be ordered.
Re-entry date: May 1
Feeling a rising tide of panic rush upward through his spinal cord and into his brain, Anil can’t stop the thoughts going around and around in his brain like the bullocks they used in his father’s village to turn the water wheel. “I won’t be able to spend time with baby Arya anymore. How will my wife manage without my help?”
The Gold-Digging Women of The British Raj*
Princess Brinda Devi’s heart was like the black hole of a coal mine—it was so dense that there was no room for light, and so deep she was afraid it would suck her in. She told herself she pitied Stella, but heard laughter answering her—how difficult it was to deceive yourself when you had known yourself a full thirty-nine years.
She had a servant summon Stella to her sitting room in the afternoon when the Prince had gone to a Royal Heads of State meeting. When Stella came before her, Princess Brinda did not speak, but rose from the Divan and removed Stella’s sari palav from her shoulder, as if in welcome, so she could study the girl.
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The Doctor Who Got Fired For Using Left-over Vaccine*
The Georgia doctor looked at the clock ticking loudly on the wall in his office, with a staccato, steady beat. Twenty minutes past 5 p.m. He had six hours.
Now that a vial of Covid-19 vaccine had been opened for his last patient on this blustery February day, he had to find ten eligible people for its remaining doses before the valuable medicine—more precious than liquid gold, he’d been told—expired. In six hours.
Scrambling, the doctor made house calls and directed people to his office outside Savannah. Some were acquaintances; others strangers. A bed-ridden octogenarian woman. A mother with a special-needs child who used a ventilator. A man in his 80s with dementia.
The Unequal Scramble for Vaccines
As soon as Los Angeles County began offering Covid vaccines to residents 65 and older, Sonia Khatri, whose non-profit agency ran a medical clinic, noticed something different.
“Suddenly our clinic was full of white people,” said Dr. Khatri, the head of Asha Kiran, which provided services to the poor. “We’ve never had that before. We serve people who are disproportionately colored—Indians, Pakistanis, Mexicans, some African-Americans.” She adjusted the steel-rimmed thick eyeglasses on her nose, which everybody said made her look like Gandhi.