Friends,
I got back to the US from India just as the coronavirus was beginning to reach North America. I’m so grateful to have the privileges of a middle-class Westerner, and am now safely in my home in Albuquerque, New Mexico, staying home and hand washing many times a day.
But now the virus is beginning to grow in India, and I think about the millions of low-paid domestic workers who have lost their jobs cooking, cleaning and driving for India’s middle class and rich folks. Apparently their low-class status brings stigma- they are assumed to. be more likely to carry the virus- and so they have no work. Imagine middle-class and rich Indians doing their own cooking and cleaning- oh my!
I pray for India’s poor that the virus spares most of them from the disease, or at least from its deadly symptoms. It’s hard to imagine India’s busy cities with little traffic or activity- I can only imagine what’s happening in rural towns and villages.
And of course what about America’s poor and homeless and refugees and prisoners. Let’s keep them in our hearts as well.
Latest on India’s poor and the virus.
Stay healthy, everyone!
