So... does this mean hypothetically:
You could book this for January. Wait and see how it goes in India ...
assuming things have not markedly improved, you could call a few weeks beforehand and change the ticket for end of March...
and if the end of March came around, still no improvement, you could then cancel the ticket and keep the credit (£781) on your VS account, and use this on another itinerary anywhere up to September 2022?
If so, this isn’t sounding so bad now...
Plus, if you have a VS mastercard, this will allow you to hit the £500 spend with VS/Virgin Holidays in the next few weeks to award you an upgrade voucher. Although, I’m not sure what the effect would be if you ultimately cancelled the ticket for credit - hopefully they wouldn’t claw back the voucher - as they’ve still had your money and it stays with them as credit!!