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While he was alive, Sushma Man worked.
At the age of 8, she helped her family decorate the wedding. At the age of twenty, he found work as a young librarian in his hometown of Mumbai. He worked in the public library for 32 years before retiring as head of the local administration. He then became an insurance agent, making sales calls and visiting clients for 15 years. Along the way, she raised three children, separated from her husband, held the daughter who broke up the marriage, and became the second mother of a grandson.
On August 30, 2020, COVID-19 died at a hospital in Mumbai. He was 76 years old.
“When you think of grandmothers, you have a certain image in your head: rocking chairs, knitting needles, books,” said Viraj Pradhan, Mane’s 28-year-old grandson. “It wasn’t anything like that. It was Super Granny. “
Pradhan grew up in a Mumbai neighborhood, attached to a middle-class childhood. The family was in a hurry to put the food on the table. Her parents divorced when she was 12, and it was Mane who took her and her mother under her wing.
Mane’s daughter studied for 12 hours a day as a librarian, putting on her shoes, taking them to school in Pradhan, attending PTA meetings, serving on school boards, overseeing homework and preparing meals – in addition to working full-time.
“Basically it was just me and him,” Pradhan said with a weird smile. “When I wasn’t in school, I tagged him with sales calls. We were inseparable. “
Mane was the oldest employee of the insurance company where he worked. It didn’t matter. He roamed the city, preferring to take public transportation instead of expensive cabins to visit customers; he would carry a heavy bag full of documents from each shoulder and often refuse to help carry offers.
“At this age, they help me balance my body,” he once told director Swati Mittal.
“I don’t think I’ll ever meet anyone like me again in my life,” Mittal told BuzzFeed News. “He always said he would work while he was alive.”
The first cracks in Super Granny’s armor were in 2017. A routine medical examination revealed an unusual electrocardiogram. Soon after, Mane began to lose blood from the inside and his hemoglobin levels dropped. Doctors were never able to diagnose his underlying condition. “Every month, when the hemoglobin level dropped, he was weak and had difficulty breathing,” Pradhan said. “It was too tiring to walk around the apartment, too.”
Eventually, Mane had to be hospitalized every month. Hospital staff used to take blood samples as often as the skin was as thin as paper. He often needed an oxygen machine to breathe. “We had a pulse oximeter much earlier than usual because of COVID-19,” Pradhan said, “and oxygen masks were normal for us. The results of his next blood report used to determine what the next few weeks would be like. Anxiety became a permanent part of our lives. “.
However, that crisis strengthened their bond. Mane spent his days on the balcony of his apartment talking to his plants, calling the kids, listening to old Bollywood songs, and taking pictures of Pradhan on the phone. Like most Indians, he was hooked on WhatsApp, often sending jokes, funny videos and “good morning” messages to his grandson. He often wrote the message, his long messages coming out like old letters:
Dear turn,
Did you eat
Did you arrive on time?
How was your meeting?
Stay calm and positive.
Take medication.
I am OK.
Calm.
What time will you be back?
Have a good day, baby.
– Aaji (“grandmother” in Marathi)
In late 2019, Pradhan left her full-time job at a digital media company and became self-employed so she would have enough time to care for her grandmother. Their duties were reversed. “He was used to being a dependent person,” he said, “but now he was dependent on me. He wasn’t ready for that.”
Thanks to her grandmother’s condition, COVID-19 appeared on Pradhan’s radar before she was noticed by most of the world. He read reports of a strange disease in China, and then in Italy, with great fear. “Although I visited the hospital often, I was used to having things under control,” she said, “but I thought that if this virus ever came here, I wouldn’t be in control. I was scared of what would happen to Grandma.”
In March, when India imposed a crackdown national closure with few warnings, Pradhan prayed for her grandmother to move on. A few days later, his hemoglobin level dropped again.
In the first three months of the country’s closure, Mane had to be hospitalized three times, which was much more difficult in a pandemic. Her symptoms – coughing, low blood oxygen levels and fatigue – were similar to those of COVID-19, which doctors often refused without a COVID test, which was difficult at the time. Later, as city hospitals overflowed with COVID-19 patients, admission was just hard; there were not enough beds available.
On August 25, Pradhan organized a COVID-19 test at his grandmother’s house. The results would last 24 hours. That night, he had no desire to eat, and as he was tired, he needed help to take a few steps from the bed to the bathroom. Pradhan slept for a while and then called an Uber to take him to the nearest hospital in the middle of the night. He refused until he received COVID-19 results. He spent the rest of the night on the brake going to various medical centers the next day, when he was admitted to a Mane government hospital, where treatment would be massively funded, unlike a private clinic.
This good news was followed by two bad news: his hemoglobin levels were still declining and, on the same day, he was positive for the coronavirus.
“Crying doesn’t come easy to me – but the first time they put it in a fan I broke it,” Pradhan said. When they tested him and his mother, they were also positive for COVID-19. They had no symptoms.
“I try to think about where and how we were infected and whether I infected my grandmother,” she said. “Thinking like that will probably make me feel like I can prevent it from happening somehow.”
The last conversation on the phone – before the Mane fan was put on – lasted 45 seconds. Pradhan’s uncle managed to send a phone to Maneri in the intensive care unit through a nurse. Pradhan told him to stop worrying about hospital bills, supplement, eat and return home as soon as possible. She didn’t worry and told him to eat meals on time (“When death is in bed!” Pradhan said).
When that call ended, he said, “Somehow he felt that[he’d] he probably talked to her last time. “
Man never wanted a big funeral, and the pandemic assured his desire. Only three people attended his cremation: Pradhan, one of his sons, and a close family friend like his son. Mane’s daughter could not attend; He was hospitalized in the quarantine after testing positive for COVID-19.
Like all other people who died in hospitals as a result of the coronavirus, Mane’s body was sealed in a bag. It was managed by staff dressed from head to toe with personal protective equipment and no one was allowed to touch it. Pradhan said he could not bring himself to be seen. He asked his uncle, Mane’s son, to put a letter at his feet, thanking him for everything he had done, along with flowers and a prize.
“What will always confuse me is that he went to the hospital alone,” he said. “She always wanted to go into her house, to her bed.”
Mittal, Mane’s director, was shocked when he called. “My breathing stopped,” he said. “There was a lot in the hospital, but we were used to coming back once. We never thought he would come back this time. Where it is now, happiness is spreading. I’m sure of that. “
A few months later, Pradhan’s phone continues to surface with photos and videos taken by Mane. He said he can’t look at them because it’s too painful.
On her WhatsApp sits an unread message from her grandmother. It’s the last time I write to him. It’s been there for months, and it hasn’t opened yet.
“It’s probably something generic, like‘ a good day ahead ’,” he said. “I haven’t checked yet. I don’t have the courage. “
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