Covid-19 is killing India and I feel completely helpless

My best friend is Indian. We met at university and although things didn't go well from the first moment, we soon discovered our mutual passion for Taylor Swift, good quality coffee and Friends. Sometimes I actually think he might be more Western than me. Culturally, anyway.

Then I remember that while my family is only a three-hour flight away, he'd have to take more than a day's worth of travel to get home. And that was the case pre-coronavirus times. Now, with news coming out that dozens of suspected Covid-19 victims are being washed up on the banks of the Ganges river, who know when the borders to home will be open for him again.

Home is such a funny word. Many use it to describe the physical place in which they live, or the nations they have been brought up in their whole lives. Some might use it to describe the place in which they feel most comfortable or the people they feel most comfortable living with. But having grown up in Italy to British parents, that word has always remained a question mark for me. My official nationality is Irish, and yet I've never lived in Ireland. London is my favourite city in the world, but I've not lived here long enough to call it home. Italy is the closest thing to home that exists, and yet when I joined the thousands of nationals who fled home from abroad amid the first wave last year, I was constantly questioned about my pale skin and Irish passport.

I'm going off-track here. So, even if home isn't one physical place for me, I'm lucky enough to have people I care about living all over the place. Should physical borders really matter? They're all a human construct anyway, right?

Wrong.

Borders are an ever-growing issue. While the world becomes more politically active, we are seeing more divide and more anger about the walls we have built between neighbouring nations. Just take Palestine as an example, the violence occurring in Jerusalem is causing outrage on social media.

But while India, Palestine, and every nation in between are being posted across this space we like to share trends on — the real lives of the people inside their borders continue to suffer. And the truth is that there's not a lot we can do from our secluded houses in the safe English countryside.

Or maybe there is?

Maybe sharing, retweeting, blogging, vlogging, and Instagramming won't affect anyone if it's just one person. But I believe if you truly care about an issue, then you should shout about it. You should be vocal. You should criticise and confront our politicians. And maybe you can offer solutions, action plans, something that won't just get politicians' attention but will change the lives of the people who see no end to these disasters.

The world is in our hands. Yes, even those of you sitting in bed mindlessly scrolling through the Internet at 2 am. Something is better than nothing. And maybe that something will actually make a difference one day.

Check out CNN's latest piece on how you can help combat India's coronavirus crisis here.