Perfumer Monika Ghurde and fashion editor Iona Fergusson at the Nature Morte gallery in Delhi in November

By the time I got to the third paragraph of Siddharth Dhanvant Shangvi’s purple-tinged tribute to Monika Ghurde, I had already made a spectacle of myself. I had managed to retain some semb­lance of a graceful composure all through Friday; from the afternoon, when I chanced upon the news of her demise while scrolling through my Facebook feed and had to endure the distasteful brunt of informing a few of our mutual acq­­u­­a­i­ntances and friends, until the evening, when I had to rush back home to Kurla to pack because my flight was scheduled for the next morning at nine. When I was in the train heading home, a mid-day reporter called to ask about my relationship with her. “She was someone I was getting to know,” I said, still in a state of shock.