It happened one year that a lot of people in India went hungry, not for food, but for oxygen. A variant strain of COVID was sweeping across the country. Many were dying who might have lived if only they had been able to obtain supplemental oxygen. A gray market had emerged as desperate family members sought to obtain bottled oxygen in any way they could. Some gurdwaras had set up oxygen langars. These were improvised, frequently open-air facilities where oxygen flowed from steel bottles—the same ones used in the welding industry—into regulators and thence through networks of tubes to masks where suffering patients could obtain some relief. It was not the same standard of care as prevailed in ICUs, where patients were sedated and intubated, but it was enough to make a difference for patients who only needed a little assistance with breathing and who otherwise might have overwhelmed hospitals.