Today's column marks a decade of Paronormal Activity—10 years of the opportunity to look at the world with attention and traumatise editors with late-sending. I went back curiously to my first column. It was about a woman called Priya Zagade, whose fireman husband died in a work accident. She refused to deposit her compensation cheque, because she wanted someone from the administration to come meet her. She was paralysed and described how her husband had built a ramp for her, in their chawl, with his own hands. Perhaps it was this loss of love and kindness she wanted witnessed and affirmed.

Reading it, I was reminded of a moving lockdown story. The wife of a 65-year-old daily wage worker, needed chemotherapy, but there was no public transport. He put her on his cycle carrier, tied her to him with a towel and pedalled 130 km to the hospital. He cycled for 18 hours, including a short break for tea and nap. In times of hardship and uncertainty, you want to be near someone who will do what they can to care for and comfort you; in the presence of love, not at the mercy of bureaucracy. Money is not the only need humans have.