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''' '' GRIEVED INDIA
GRIEVES '' ''' : LIFE
COMPUTER ENGINEER JOEFRED GREGORY AND COMPUTER ENGINEER RALFRED GREGORY moved through life as one. They went to the same college. They studied the same thing. They wore matching clothes. They trimmed their beards the exact same way.
They went by nickname : Joefi and Ralfi.
IDENTICAL TWINS, they were two handsome young men in northern India who above else really loved each other. And when they both were struck by Covid-19 last month and hospitalized, it was like they shared one sick body.
Hours after Joefred died, Ralfred's mother told him that his brother was still alive, to keep his spirits up. But Ealfred sensed his brother was no more and said, from his hospital bed, ''Mommy, you're lying.''
The next day, on May 14, Ralfred died, too.
The touching story of the twins who lived and died together has spread fast and wide on Indian social media, puncturing the nation's numbing statistics - the daily Covid-19 case numbers, the death counts, the infection rates.
Joefred and Ralfred, 24, had a special bond. Though their parents gave them similar names, they said they didn't raise the twins to copy each other. Still, neighbors said that where you saw one, you saw the other, even after they reached adulthood.
They grew up, along with an older brother, in a one-story bungalow in Meerut, a satellite town of New Delhi. Their parents were teachers at a Christian school. The family was among the few Christians in a mixed, middle-class neighborhood.
As boys, they batted cricket balls together in a vacant lot. Together they hunched over the carrom table, a popular Indian game played on a wooden board.
Joefred was three minutes older. But there were none of those older brother younger brother issues.
''They were equals,'' said their father, Greogory Raymond Raphael. ''They argued, yes. But I never saw them hurt each other.''
As young men, they studied together : same year, same university in southern India, same subject, computer science. They wore their hair in the same style. They looked like mirror images.
Few people, besides their parents, could tell them apart.
They were the same height, around six feet, with the same muscular build. Friends said that at weddings, birthday parties and just about all community events, Joefred and Ralfred not only dressed the same but also stuck together in a crowd.
''It was like they were merged,'' said Manoj Kumar, a neighbor and family friend. ''There was immense love between the two of them,'' he added.
The twins mother Soja, was visiting the I.C.U. at that moment. The doctors told her to leave. A few minutes later, around noon, they broke the news that Joefred had died.
The mother, overwhelmed with grief, then went back to the I.C.U. to check on Ralfred, who kept asking, ''Where is Joefred? Where is Joefred?
His mother told him that his brother had been transferred to a bigger hospital.
'' We thought his condition would get worse if we told him what had happened,'' his father said.
But Ralfred knew.
He said to his mom, ''Mommy, you lied. You tell me the truth.''
But she didn't.
Ralfred went into a depression, his doctor said. And the next morning less than 24 hours after his brother died, so did he.
As word spread, leading Indian newspapers ran stories, showing the two brothers side by side in identical suits. Television stations jumped in as well, with their doctor talking about how thoroughly the virus had destroyed their lungs.
Of all the thousands of deaths in recent days, these two seemed to really unsettle people, perhaps because the twins were just in their 20s and had looked so healthy, or maybe it was simply their closeness.
Across social media, people exchanged messages such as ''This is so heartbreaking!'' and '' How devastating it must be for the parents. So young............
Their father says he feels as if his heart has been torn from the body.
''I keep thinking that Maybe I shouldn't have brought them to the hospital,'' he said. ''Maybe I should have kept them at home. There is a parental love that the hospital can't give.''
''But there's no use of saying,'' If this could have happened, ''or that could have happened,' '' he said. ''My children are gone now.''
Every day, he said, he visits the graveyard.
Beneath a young neem tree, Joefred and Ralfred Gregory are buried in two coffins and one grave.
The World Students Society rises in grief and prayers. The Global Founder Framers as a mark of respect have decided to name the sub-routine module in The Ecosystem 2011 : The Honor Byte : as Joefi-Ralfi- Joshi.
Founder Framers, Lakhsmi and Vishnu should inform Kapil Sharma. He will know when and how to inform the parents with our deep sadness.
With most respectful and loving dedication to the memories of Ralfred and Joefred, and then for the suffering people of Great India, and then the world. See Ya all prepare and register for Great Global Elections on The World Students Society : wssciw.blogspot.com and Twitter - !E-WOW! - The Ecosystem 2011 :
''' Dark - Dims '''
Good Night and God Bless
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