Priyam Saini and Anuj Dhir lived in other Australian cities when they met in an Indian marriage last June.
In February they married.
“I think when things are meant to be, they do it quickly,” says Dhir, a civil engineer.
A small public service performed in New Delhi, in front of the couple’s families, and Dhir left soon after to begin a new job. Saini, a psychologist, had planned to leave Brisbane to live with him in Sydney.
Five months later, he’s in New Delhi.
“We had so many plans, and now we’re just waiting to see others,” Says Saini.
The couple separated through coronavirus regulations in two countries. And they’re not alone.
Of the 18,800 Australian citizens and visa holders who have told the government to return, 7,500 are in India.
In recent months, diplomats have helped another 8,000 people board forty-five flights between India and Australia, according to a spokesman for the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT).
But some of the thousands of Australian citizens and still-attending visa holders say that not enough is being done to get home. They’re angry, frustrated, and some of them don’t have money.
They blame Australia’s limits on the arrivals of foreigners, which have halved the number of citizens who can return home by a week.
And they point to the government’s resolve to allow three hundred foreign academics to return to Australia next month as evidence that the country’s leaders have turned their own backs on their own people.
Australia has imposed some of the strictest border regulations in the world to prevent the spread of coronavirus. On 18 March he banned Australians from leaving the country. Two days later, he closed his borders to anyone who is not a citizen or resident.
“We also urge Australians who want to return home to do so as soon as possible,” Prime Minister Scott Morrison said at the time. Those who could not or were unable to return were invited to pay attention to the local authorities.
The first wave of coronavirus cases in Australia peaked at the end of March and, for a few months, gave the impression that the country had succeeded in suppressing network transmission. But in early July, cases began to increase and the government tightened limits on foreign arrivals.
Before the tapas were introduced, about 8,000 more people returned to Australia a week. Today, only another 4,000 people are allowed in. No more than 350 other people can land in Sydney on one or both days, and less than 75 in Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth.
Foreign flights are not allowed in Melbourne, the epicentre of the wave at the moment. Airlines return citizens on subsequent flights or cancel them to comply with the rules.
In early August, Australia’s national cupboard announced that the boundaries would remain until October 24.
“Right now, on the risk balance, we want to keep those roofs where they are,” the prime minister said Friday, adding that the roofs would be checked every two weeks.
The government says the boundaries are necessary to ease tensions in the hotel quarantine system. All incoming travellers must be quarantined in hotels for 14 days.
While hotel quarantine has been shown to paintings in some cities, he has been blamed for the recent outbreak of cases in Victoria, leading officials to re-impose closure.
Nearly 99% of Victoria’s momentary wave instances are connected to two quarantined hotels in Melbourne, the state capital, authorities said in an investigation into the outbreak.
Australians in India say they suffer the effects of a state’s quarantine formula, and that their good luck in other cities shows that the dangers can be managed.
“People who make mistakes in the country accuse other people like us,” says Sameer Raichandani, who returned to India in June to be with his father while undergoing chemotherapy for leukemia.
She hopes to be back in Sydney for the birth of her momentary son in early November, but is gradually losing hope.
Vinod Nagaraja and Sangeeta Kumar had enough time to move boxes to their new home in Sydney in February before flying to India the next day to spend time with Kumar’s dying mother.
They planned to return on March 26, after the funeral, but their flight was cancelled when India entered a strict blockade that lasted until June. Since then, they have been looking for e-book flights from Kochi, Kerala, and have suitcases waiting if the seats suddenly appear.
“In a moment we can leave, but the challenge is simply to get tickets,” says Kumar.
Several flights scheduled to depart India in July were cancelled due to flight limits. Two flights departed India to Australia in early August, and two more scheduled for August 22 and 26.
A wave of enthusiasm ran through Facebook’s “Australians Trapped in India” where other people shared full stories of massive efforts to get home. On Twitter, High Commissioner Barry O’Farrell suggested prospective passengers monitor Air India’s account and social media for sale.
Saini, the bride, spent days in front of her laptop, waiting for the tickets to go online. When nothing happened, he went to Air India’s workplace in New Delhi to ask what was going on.
“I cry and cry just because I knew the tickets are already sold out and we don’t have a flight until October,” she says.
Air India said tickets for both flights were for passengers who had been evicted from previous flights, and even in this case, the number was limited.
“Flights can carry up to forty-five passengers due to restrictions imposed by the Australian authorities,” an Air India spokesman said.
No other airline can fly from India to Australia, India’s civil aviation minister, Hardeep Singh Puri, said last week that the two countries were negotiating to plan more flights.
According to the Australian High Commission in India and Air India, 4 flights from New Delhi to Australia were scheduled for August for a total of about 400 people.
DFAT says it continues to “explore options” for Australians to board flights.
“Lately there are no plans for flights facilitated through the Australian from India,” said a spokesman.
No flights between India and Australia are indexed in the repatriation programme of the Vande Bharat Mission of India, which covers dates until 23 October.
Some other people are so eager to get past home that they are investigating charter flights.
Mehul Patel tries to buy tickets for his wife and daughter who are stranded in Rajkot, Gujarat. He hasn’t seen them since February, when he took a flight back to Melbourne. On Friday she missed her daughter’s first birthday and needs to get her family circle back.
Charter flights require permission from the Australian Border Force to land, so none have been approved, Says Patel.
For many, frustration became anger this month when the Australian government announced a pilot program that allowed three hundred foreign academics to travel to Adelaide in September to help the university sector in which it was suffering.
He insisted there would be no special charter flights.
“There are no shortcuts to foreign academics who will participate in this pilot project,” Australian Trade Minister Simon Birmingham told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. “They’ll have to deal with the unpredictability of airlines, just like anything else.”
However, Australians stranded in India are concerned that foreign academics will hold positions that might otherwise have been assigned to them.
Bryce Onions, an Australian taxi driving force waiting for the hour at a two-star hotel near New Delhi Airport, says the government does more to help Australians stranded abroad.
“They don’t do enough, far from enough, it’s poor, it’s disgusting,” he says.
The onions left Australia before Christmas to spend time with friends in Darjeeling, West Bengal, and had planned to spend time in Egypt and Botswana before returning home. These have been cancelled.
“They say, you know, move home. After everything failed me, I think I’ll stop by to move on to the house, but then I couldn’t.”
Some caught Australians worry about running out of money.
Robert Lepcha, his wife and two-year-old daughter are stranded in Sikkim, northeastern India. The trio had planned to return to Australia in the new year after visiting the family for a long time.
Before leaving, Lepcha painted as a security guard at a taxi rank on the exclusive coast of the town of Byron Bay, New South Wales. Now there are no pictures to move home, even if you can only locate one flight.
“Right now, all I’m doing is essentially looking for borrowed money from friends and family in Australia. All my savings are gone.”
Although he can locate a flight from New Delhi, Lepcha is eager to take his wife and son to the Indian capital, four hours’ flight away.
“Delhi is an access point. I’m afraid to buy the Covid-19 myself,” he says.
Of the more than 3 million Cases of Covid-19, more than 161,000 are in New Delhi, where there have been 4,300 deaths, at Johns Hopkins University.
On Friday, the Australian prime minister said the government is exploring tactics to provide more help to Australians stranded abroad. Until then, for many, there is still no selection to wait for.
The cash that Saini and Dhir stored for their honeymoon was reserved for flight prices, as long as they can find one, and the quarantine charge of A$3,000 ($2,150).
Their dating may have as an online romance between two cities, but being separated between two countries is “much more difficult,” Dhir says.
“At that moment, even though we were in a remote relationship, we had something to look forward to… Not knowing what the long term holds is hard to handle.”
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