There is no single way to define loss, especially in the year of a pandemic, where the inevitability of death has been exacerbated.

Author Siddharth Dhanvant Shanghvi, who has experienced a decade of grief, losing first his mother, Padmini, his father Dhavant, and then his dachshund Bruschetta in 2018, has seen death from close quarters and the radiating isolation and loneliness that come with it. The pandemic, he says, made him more "curious" about it.