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Aug 01, 2021 2 mins, 54 secs

NBC News and The Fuller Project asked Indians in America to share tributes to female friends and family back home who have been touched by Covid-19 in some way.

The last time Benson Neethipudi saw his maternal grandmother, Manimma Kambham, in person was at his wedding in January 2020 — just before the pandemic hit. .

You have to project that persona of being tough,” Neethipudi said of his grandmother.

“It was all logistical,” Neethipudi said of his family’s efforts to make arrangements at the height of Covid restrictions.

Neethipudi feels that both his grandmother and mother chose to become buffers between him and a world that was hellbent on breaking them.

“For me to be able to be successful at this level is because my grandmother and mother chose to be those absorbing elements of trauma,” Neethipudi said.

She never married but became a second mother to her niece and nephew — Manjrekar’s children — when they later moved to America for higher education. .

By the time she was transferred to a hospital with an available intensive care unit, days later, her condition had gotten worse.

As months in lockdown rolled by, the 77-year-old matriarch started feeling restless: She yearned to go home, see her friends and family, run her own home and make her own schedules, said her grandson Afraz Khan, who lives in Los Angeles and whose mother is Humayun’s eldest daughter.  

Against the wishes of her family, Humayun returned back home to Lucknow

In her last 10 to12 days, her family felt their hearts rise and fall in conjunction with her oxygen levels. 

On a Thursday evening in Los Angeles, Khan’s family members were about to break the fast they observed during the holy month of Ramadan, but his mother didn’t want to eat

Even years later, when she first came to Los Angeles to visit Khan’s family, she made it her mission to learn how to navigate the new, alien city

“Somehow, she also manages to binge-watch Netflix shows in the midst of all this,” said her youngest sister, Fatima Husain, who works in venture capital in the San Francisco Bay Area

Husain, who is eight years older than Fatima Husain, is the oldest of three sisters

Beyond being an accomplished doctor and the most responsible family member, according to Fatima Husain, her eldest sister is goofy, loves to sing and volunteers to help people who are more vulnerable

Behind her no-nonsense exterior, Husain is a softy who loves animals: In her home live cats, turtles, a variety of fish and maybe, soon, a puppy. 

The humans in Husain’s household include not only her husband and children but also her parents and elderly grandparents, so balancing the risks of her work with the safety of her family is an immense challenge during the pandemic — one that she tackles with her signature matter-of-fact resolve. 

For months during the lockdown that followed, even after she recovered, she would observe a strict protocol at home: She wore a mask around her high-risk family members and ate her meals separately

She, her parents, her husband and even her children contracted the delta variant this year

While her own family had the virus, and bodies piled up around them, Husain nevertheless found the time to describe the goings-on to the world: “The situation on the ground is nothing short of an apocalypse,” she told CNN in late April

Three months on, “things are on the mend,” Fatima Husain added, “but everyone’s nervous about the third wave coming about.” 

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