17 ‘triggering’ images, each tells story of Delhi’s Covid disaster that a thousand words can’t

For well over a week, the same old story has been playing out in the national capital — of deaths, few hospital beds and a city gasping for breath.

Family members stand between burning pyres at the Seemapuri crematorium | Praveen Jain | ThePrint

New Delhi: The tears have dried up at Delhi’s cremation grounds. The pyres are so close to one another, they burn incessantly and the smoke burns your eyes, so it’s better to get the job done quickly.

Let us now consign our mother or father or sister or brother to the fire. This life is over. The body has shed its clothes, says the Gita, and the soul will soon take on another body, another life. Ashes to ashes.

We, those of us who are left behind, with our grief and our memories, all we can do is hold each other and grieve together in the shadow of the night, lit up by her pyre. Even in her death, she gives us light.

Over the last week and more, ever since Delhi became among the worst Covid-19 affected cities in the country, ThePrint’s Photo Editor Praveen Jain has been walking the national capital, capturing images of grieving families at crematoria in Seemapuri and Ghazipur, crowds at liquor vends, masked up city folk standing at chemist stores awaiting their turn, an ‘oxygen langar’ at the Indirapuram gurdwara on the outskirts of the capital and the Lok Nayak Jai Prakash Narayan Hospital — the city’s main Covid-19 centre.

Photographers are no longer allowed inside, so Jain stalks the gates that have become a crucible of emotion — wails of grief, pure relief as well as quiet resignation — patients enter and leave, a ceaseless turnover of life and death.

Here is a selection of his pictures of a city under siege:

Workers at the Seemapuri crematorium carry wood on a cart | Praveen Jain | ThePrint

A patient lies in an ambulance van outside LNJP hospital | Praveen Jain | ThePrint

An old man holds his ailing wife outside LNJP | Praveen Jain | ThePrint

Outside LNJP hospital, family members grieve over the death of a relative | Praveen Jain | ThePrint

60-year-old Attaullah came in an auto-rickshaw to LNJP hospital, after his oxygen levels had dipped below 50 | Praveen Jain | ThePrint

Here, Attaullah is surrounded by the LNJP hospital staff, who finally took him inside on a stretcher | Praveen Jain | ThePrint

At the Ghazipur crematorium, relatives wear PPE suits | Praveen Jain | ThePrint

Foreign media at the Seemapuri cremation ground in New Delhi | Praveen Jain | ThePrint

A dumpster full of PPE kits at the entrance of the Nigambodh Ghat crematorium | Praveen Jain | ThePrint

A man on oxygen support at an Indirapuram gurdwara where an ‘oxygen langar’ has been arranged | Photo: Praveen Jain | ThePrint

The rush outside the Indirapuram gurdwara for oxygen cylinders | Praveen Jain | ThePrint

A woman helps a relative attach her mask to an oxygen cylinder outside the Indirapuram gurdwara |Praveen Jain | ThePrint

Families wait outside the gate of LNJP hospital | Praveen Jain | ThePrint

A man sits in an auto-rickshaw outside the Indirapuram gurdwara | Praveen Jain | ThePrint

Crowd outside a liquor shop after the Delhi government announced a lockdown | Praveen Jain | ThePrint

Queue outside a medical shop in New Delhi | Praveen Jain| ThePrint