His Mom Was Sick In India During The Second Wave. He Wrote A Poem About It — And Hope

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For Manas Ray, the distance from his home in Massachusetts to India, where his extended family lives, has made the coronavirus pandemic feel like a nightmare.

At least 12 friends and family members close to the biochemist have been infected since April 2020, including his mother, Bandana. Reports earlier this spring from his friends and relatives were especially bleak as the second wave devastated the country he left 33 years ago.

"It's very hard on me because I'm so far away from them and cannot help," Ray tells Morning Edition.

COVID case numbers are coming down but just a month ago, India was experiencing record infection rates, topping over 400,000 cases in one day. There have been days when hospitals ran out of space and crematoriums were at capacity. Only about 3 percent of India's 1.3 billion population has been fully vaccinated. More than 350,000 Indians have died.

So Ray wrote a poem about it as part of a recent NPR poetry callout that prompted readers with the words "Still, I Rise" from a Maya Angelou poem.