'Each pyre an unspeakable horror': Researcher in India Covid-19 crisis

Infections have been rising for months, creating exorbitant pressures on health personnel and infrastructure.

August 25, 2020

It is pouring by the time my taxi reaches Oxford’s Gloucester Green bus station. I dash through the rain towards the Heathrow bay as the X90 coach pulls in. The driver gets down to smoke a cigarette and we talk, about COVID-19 obviously. He says he does not know of a single person who has died of this disease. “You only hear it on the news. Frankly, unless people start dropping dead on the street, I’m not believing it”.

A few hours later I am on an Air India repatriation flight to New Delhi, flying home for fieldwork. My