For several months, Pankaj Sharma has been running his family business in Perth alone.
His wife, Kim Soans Sharma, travelled to India in January after her father died and has been stuck in Mumbai and unable to return to Australia ever since.
“She’s alone, at a time when you need to be next to your family, and I need to be with her while she’s going through this. It’s the first time we’ve lost either of our parents. And I can’t be there. It's stressful for both of us,” Mr Sharma told SBS News.
He says he and his wife - who are both Australian citizens - did the right thing.
Under the federal government’s rules, he didn’t qualify as a relative of his dying father-in-law, and so wasn’t granted an exemption to travel overseas.
“She got the exemption and I didn’t. I re-applied, but was rejected again and told ‘your father-in-law is not your immediate family,’” he said.
“It was a shock because we couldn’t believe how that was being interpreted by the [Australian government]. Culturally, when you get married, you get married to a family, you don’t get married to a person. Your family isn’t just your wife and kids, it’s your parents and your wife’s parents.”
The couple has lived in Perth for eight years, running a philanthropic Indian foods enterprise.
Mr Sharma's wife has been stranded in India for months. Source: Aaron Fernandes/SBS News
“We’ve been trying to get her back," Mr Sharma said. "There were no flights before May unless we were ready to pay $8,000 to $10,000 to get her on first class. So we thought she would spend time with her family and hope for a ticket to become available. It never happened.”
Mr Sharma says Prime Minister Scott Morrison's announcement on Tuesday that direct passenger flights from India to Australia will be suspended until 15 May, shows the Australian government has failed to establish an effective quarantine system and turned its back on its own citizens.
“We’re willing to pay for hotel quarantine, airfares, produce a negative test and go through all the rules and regulations, the only thing we expect from the government is that they have a process in place to allow their citizens to come back,” he said.
“At least open the doors for us ... By closing borders, you have just killed our hope.”
By closing borders, you have just killed our hope. - Pankaj Sharma, Perth
India recorded more than 320,000 new cases on Tuesday and 2,771 deaths, with the country's health system now overwhelmed and some patients being turned away from hospitals at capacity.
"The scenes we are seeing from India are truly heartbreaking," Mr Morrison said.
Consular support will continue to be provided to Australians in India and Mr Morrison vowed the next phase of flights will focus on returning "vulnerable Australians" back home.
'We’re talking about humans'
The Western Australian Government blamed a recent COVID-19 outbreak in Perth in part on the federal government, for allowing Australians to travel to India during the pandemic.
A Perth man who reportedly returned from India after attending his own wedding was quarantined at the Mercure Hotel, a facility the state government knew posed a risk of airborne transmission due to poor ventilation.
The man eventually infected other guests, leading to a three-day lockdown of the Perth region.
WA Premier Mark McGowan responded by slashing the number of international arrivals allowed to quarantine in the state by half.
The Mercure Hotel in Perth. Source: AAP
“India is an epicentre of death and destruction as we speak. I don’t think there is any need to go to India, I don’t,” he said on Tuesday.
But community leaders say Indian-Australians should not be blamed for failures in hotel quarantine.
“It's a very irresponsible remark," said Indian Society of Western Australia president Supriya Guha.
"You can’t just make a blanket statement that people are travelling for trivial reasons. Who defines a wedding or a funeral as trivial?”
“I understand where the premier and the government is coming from. But we need to be really careful about making those comments because this is triggering an emotional outburst in a 100,000-strong Indian community here in Western Australia."
“The community is under distress, most of us are first-generation Indian-Australians, we’ve got our family back in India, and there are Indian-Australians that need to come home.”
“We need to be a bit more compassionate and understanding of the situation, we’re talking about humans here.”
Perth software architect Guarav Tiwari, 38, is trying desperately to travel to India.
Guarav Tiwari is desperately trying to return to India to be with his mother. Source: Supplied
His father died two years ago and his mother is now alone in the city of Kanpur, in Utter Pradesh. She has tested positive for COVID-19.
“With the surge in COVID-19 cases, it's difficult to find a hospital bed. There’s a shortage of oxygen. I haven’t slept for three days in a row, I’m trying to keep her alive,” Mr Tiwari said.
He has applied to the Department of Home Affairs for a travel exemption.
“I don’t want to live with the guilt that I haven’t done enough to save my mum. I can't live with that kind of failure.”
Mr Morrison said the suspension of flights comes after other governments suspended flights from international transit hubs including Doha, Singapore and Kuala Lumpur.
“[For] Australian residents in India, we are standing with them and recognise the serious difficulties they face," he said.
"A hardship program which has been in place for many months now continues to be available to provide support to Australians in those circumstances.”
When flights from India do resume, all Australians will be required to have both a negative COVID-19 polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test result and a negative rapid antigen test result prior to taking off.
But it's little consolation for Mr Sharma, who just wants his wife to be able to come home.
He says Indian-Australians are being treated differently to Australians from other countries such as the US and UK, which didn't face a travel ban during COVID-19 surges.
“That’s been a massive shock for me personally, to see a government shut the door on its own citizens,” he said.
“Yes we’ve been here for a shorter period of time compared to millions of others, but does that make us less of a citizen if they’ve been here for 80 years and I’ve been for eight years?
“How is it possible that rather than having compassion and an effective quarantine system, they’re shutting borders?”
