Faces of despair: ‘I want to see my dad’

A lot can go wrong in the 1000km journey between Ahmedabad in western India and New Delhi that Arun and Arundhati Hattangadi will take.

Arun and Arundhati Hattangadi in India. Source: Supplied

A lot can go wrong in the 1000km journey between Ahmedabad in western India and the COVID-ravaged capital New Delhi that Arun and Arundhati Hattangadi will take this week for their May 22 evacuation flight home.

But it is only in recent days that the full extent of the risk involved in the final leg of the Sydney couple’s 13-month odyssey has become clear.

With 70 people disqualified from the first Qantas flight on Friday because of potentially questionable positive PCR tests, Mr Hattangadi, a 67-year-old businessman, and his 63-year-old wife know they too could fall at the final hurdle.

Both contracted COVID-19 last September and wonder whether faint traces of the virus picked up in their final pre-flight tests could disqualify them from a reunion with their three children and their grandchildren, including the first grandson, born two months ago.

“I’m resigned to my fate,” said Mr Hattangadi, who in the past year has faced an India lockdown, two flight cancellations and the catastrophic second COVID wave that prompted Australia to temporarily ban all returns.

“I am hoping for the best but if it doesn’t happen we will survive. We have to accept that there is a pandemic around us. If something like this had happened 10 years ago we would be much more distraught. Fortunately we have WhatsApp now.”

The Hattangadis may be philosophical about their fate, but for 14-year-old Navdeep Singh the prospect of months more — perhaps years — separated from his father in Adelaide, his school, friends and the only home he has known fills him with despair.

The schoolboy accompanied his mother Sukhjinder Kaur on what was to have been a short trip to her home town of Mohali in Punjab on March 8, 2020, three weeks after he started high school, to provide post-surgical care for his octogenarian grandfather.

He had been happy to see his birth country, which he had left as a two-year-old, fully expecting to be back in Adelaide for district cricket trials a month later.

But the two became trapped in India little more than two weeks into their trip when Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a snap nationwide lockdown would come into force just four hours later.

Sukhjinder Kaur and Navdeep Singh.

That initial three week lockdown ultimately extended until May 30, outlasting their Australian visas — an increasingly common fate among Indian Australians as the pandemic persists.

They have been in legal limbo ever since, caught up by global circumstances and unforgiving bureaucracy as Navdeep’s father Ranjit, in Adelaide, works frantically to reunite the family.

Things turned from bad to worse in January when Navdeep’s school, Plympton International College, said it could no longer provide online classes. Navdeep is ineligible to attend local schools because he doesn’t read or write Punjabi.

“We kept telling the school, ‘we are coming back soon, we are coming back soon’ but they told us it was too much work for the teachers and we had to come back by July for me to stay in the same year level, or I would be held back,” Navdeep said.

“I’ve been in the Australian school system since reception. We have tried everything to get back. We’re ready to follow every protocol. If they want us to quarantine for one month, two months, I don’t care. I just want to go back to school.

“Not being at school is draining my brain. I haven’t seen my dad for so long. I see pictures of my friends having fun, going swimming, playing cricket and it’s really hard because I want to be with them. Years 8 and 9 are the years when you can have fun and I’ve missed that.”

Mr Singh said he would pack up the family’s life in Australia tomorrow to reunite with his family, but his son was desperate to come home.

“He has grown up in western culture,” he said. “He doesn’t want to live in India.”