Having graduated in May 2019, and joined a job soon after, 2020 would have been the year 23-year-old Aathira Nair had newer experiences to look forward to. “I used to go to work every day. That was my primary space of socialising and it was immediately cut off [when the pandemic hit]. My weekend plans were cancelled. I worked in Mumbai through the week and on weekends, I would go to Palghar, where my family lives. The lockdown meant that I couldn’t do that either,” says Nair, a marketing associate at a media production company.

What helped her get through the year, she says, is a Facebook group started by a friend. Simply called No, the group with 300 people on it, across the ages of 18 to 35, and from all over the world, had only one friend in common. “But we would use the space to talk about bands, promote our bands. We’d have a Zoom call every Saturday that started at 9 pm, where we’d talk and jam, discuss our struggles or what we were going through in life. Sometimes, the call continues till nearly 7 am the next day. Through this I have made six friends, whom I had never met, but we have been there for each other through this year,” says Nair.