Crematories are so full of bodies, it's as if a war just happened. Fires burn around the clock. Many places are holding mass cremations, dozens at a time, and at night, in certain areas of New Delhi, the sky glows.
Sickness and death are everywhere.
Dozens of houses in my neighbourhood have sick people.
One of my colleagues is sick.
One of my son's teachers is sick.
The neighbour two doors down, to the right of us: sick.
Two doors to the left: sick.
"I have no idea how I got it," said a good friend who is now in the hospital. "You catch just a whiff of this….." and then his voice trailed off, too sick to finish.
He barely got a bed. And the medicine his doctors say he needs is nowhere to be found in India.
I'm sitting in my apartment waiting to catch the disease. That's what it feels like right now in New Delhi with the world's worst coronavirus crisis advancing around us. It is out there, I am in here, and I feel like it's only a matter of time before I, too, get sick.
India is now recording more infections per day — as many as 350,000 — than any other country has since the pandemic began, and that's just the official number, which most experts think is a vast underestimation.
New Delhi, India's sprawling capital of 20 million, is suffering a calamitous surge. A few days ago, the positivity rate hit a staggering 36% — meaning more than one out of three people tested were infected. A month ago, it was less than 3%.
The infections have spread so fast that hospitals have been completely swamped. People are turned away by the thousands. Medicine is running out. So is lifesaving oxygen. The sick have been left stranded in interminable lines at hospital gates or at home, literally gasping for air.
Although New Delhi is locked down, the disease is still rampaging. Doctors across this city and some of Delhi's top politicians are issuing desperate SOS calls to India's prime 'vaccines. Doctors are pretty scared. Some we have spoken to said they had been vaccinated twice and still got seriously ill, a very bad sign.
So what can you do?
I try to stay positive, believing that is one of the best immunity boosters, but I find myself drifting in a daze through the rooms of our apartment, listlessly opening cans of food and making meals for my kids, feeling like my mind and body are turning to mush. I'm afraid to check my phone and get another message about a friend who has deteriorated. Or worse. I'm sure millions of people have felt this way, but I've started imagining symptoms: Is my throat sore? What about that background headache? Is it worse today?
However difficult and dangerous it feels in Delhi for all of us, it's probably going to get worse. Epidemiologists say the numbers will keep climbing, to 500,000 reported cases a day nationwide and as many as 1 million Indians dead from Covid-19 by August.
It didn't have to be like this.
Modi remains popular among his base, but more people are blaming him for failing to prepare India for this surge and for holding packed political rallies in recent weeks where few precautions were enforced — possible superspreader events.
"Social distancing norms have gone for a complete toss," one Delhi newscaster said the other day, during a broadcast of one of Modi's rallies.
In India, as elsewhere, the wealthy can pad the blow of many crises. But this time it's different.
A well-connected friend activated his entire network to help someone close to him, a young man with a bad case of Covid. My friend's friend died. No amount of pull could get him into a hospital. There were just too many other sick people.
"I tried everything in my power to get this guy a bed, and we couldn't," my friend said. "It's chaos."
His feelings were raw.
"This is a catastrophe. This is murder."
Written by: Jeffrey Gettleman
Photographs by: Atul Loke
© 2020 THE NEW YORK TIMES