At Christmas she wanted to introduce her granddaughter to the grandparents – but it’s too dangerous. –
27 minutes ago
Like on a postcard: The Manhattan skyline with Ashish and – the pregnant – Angelika Sharma.
23.12.2020
© Photo: private
Like on a postcard: The Manhattan skyline with Ashish and – the pregnant – Angelika Sharma.
23.12.2020
Photo: Photo: private
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It’s going to be a very special Christmas, it’s the first time for three. Angelika and her husband Ashish have brought a Christmas tree to their apartment on the tenth floor and decorated it for a festive occasion. Colorfully wrapped gifts will be underneath on Christmas Eve, maybe Angelika will turn on a few German Christmas carols. And there will be raclette to eat, yes, raclette, after all, there was always that at Christmas.
Abitur at Christian-Ernst-Gymnasium
Angelika Sharma always flew home at Christmas, wherever she ended up in this world. “It’s a ritual, a tradition,” says the 35-year-old. After graduating from Christian-Ernst-Gymnasium, she moved to London, from 2006 she lived and worked in the English capital until she met her current husband in Puerto Rico in 2013. They fell in love, had a long-distance relationship, “he flew whenever I could to London – or I, whenever I could, to him in New York”. Except at Christmas, when she flew home.
Angelika and Ashish married in 2017 and bought a condominium in Union City. On her walk, she says, they can look out over the Hudson River at the New York skyline. It looks like a postcard.
33,465 dead in 61 days
New York, New York
The New York International Auto Show (NYIAS) (March 30th to April 9th) attracts a wealthy audience. It is therefore an important sales fair for automobile manufacturers. Interesting innovations will also be presented from a German point of view, for example the coupé and cabriolet of the newly face-lifted Mercedes C-Class or the new Toyota RAV4. And VW is supplementing its large US SUV Atlas with the studies of an SUV coupé and a mid-size pick-up.
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But not everything will work in 2020 in the land of unlimited possibilities. Covid-19 has also struck the United States, whose president has struggled for so long to recognize and counteract the pandemic. The city on the east coast was hit with full force, it wasn’t until December 18 that there was a new high of 12,606 new infections. At the height of the first wave, the 61 days between March 11 and May 11, 33,465 people died in New York – more than from the Spanish flu. The death rate – not the infection rate – measured per 100,000 inhabitants was 202.08.
At some point there was a makeshift hospital made up of tents in Central Park, refrigerated trucks drove the bodies through the streets, hospital staff who were completely overwhelmed and toiled until they fell, even a military aircraft carrier was ordered into Manhattan Bay to serve as a hospital. This colossus also pushed itself into this postcard picture on Angelika’s walk. “It ran down my spine as cold as ice,” she says. She had long since withdrawn into her apartment as well as possible, heavily pregnant. She only saw and heard of what was happening outside the home on television, and worried friends and family in Erlangen calmed down on the phone.
“It has become quiet”
says Angelika Sharma. Anyone who is sensible and does not necessarily have to go out on the streets. Because the virus was able to spread unhindered among the 8.4 million inhabitants for a relatively long time, there is hardly anyone who does not know someone who suffered or died from Covid.
“Annika thinks the grandparents live on the iPad”: The small Sharma family.
23.12.2020
© Photo: private
“Annika thinks the grandparents live on the iPad”: The small Sharma family.
23.12.2020
Photo: Photo: private
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One day the disease also came to the apartment building in Union City. The friendly neighbor, a single parent with her two small children, who gave the pregnant German baby toys, who always asked so nicely, wrote: “Sorry, we have Covid.” Now the virus was next door, “on the other side of the wall,” as Angelika says.
Aunt in India died of Covid
Her husband’s family in Delhi was not spared either: One month after the birth of little Annika, Ashish’s aunt died of Covid. “We’ve only been at home since September,” says Angelika, apart from short walks. Only once did they allow themselves to be persuaded, packed the car and drove over to Brooklyn to the roof terrace of their maid of honor. “It was spooky,” says Angelika, “I’ve never seen Manhattan so empty. It was like in an end-of-time movie. So incredibly quiet.”
