The bike ride to the Indian grocery store in Tooting was the first time I had ventured more than two miles away from my home in six weeks. Since we moved to London, I had been holding a fear of double decker buses bearing in on me while bicycling. Now, we have bigger, more urgent fears.

Discovering new lanes and tunnels and parks, bicycling by skateparks, following directions from my phone, I rode by Wimbledon Commons, one thousand acres of countryside in the middle of Wimbledon. I felt again that pang of guilt at the beauty of this city where the parks have been kept open. The Commons though not full had plenty of people keeping space between themselves and kicking ball, playing, running, exercising, walking in the early summer sun.

In India, an uncle of mine spent an entire day in an ambulance trying to find a hospital in Kolkata that would take him in for a respiratory distress, earlier misdiagnosed for two weeks as typhoid. In a small town in Andhra Pradesh where another aunt and uncle live with their daughter, the apartment building is now in quarantine after a resident in the building tested positive. It has been three days now and the uncle is running out of his diabetes testing needles and my aunt of her blood pressure meds. They eat dal and rice, they have run out of tea. They will not be able to leave their apartment for twenty one days and no one has yet figured out how or if they will receive their meds or any more food. The stories of migrant laborers from India to Singapore are painful to read.

I will stand in line at the Indian groceries and after I buy my chilis and rice and okra and dal, I will bicycle back home with them. Afterwards I will call uncles and aunts in India and talk to them and relive again being the child I once was to them.