India, March 8 -- "All you who sleep tonight /

Far from the ones you love, /

No hand to left or right, /

And emptiness above."

These lines from Vikram Seth's haunting poem, All You Who Sleep Tonight, says much of what we felt through the pandemic. Because the pandemic did not just change our world. It left us staring at a void we had to learn to navigate.

In the early days of the lockdown, the silence was eerie. No honking cars, no shouting vendors, no laughter spilling from cafes - just the sounds of own breath in the houses the more fortunate among us never left. The world shrunk to four walls and an internet connection. Days blurred. We woke up, worked, worried, and went back to sleep, on a loop.

The unfortunate among us lost lov...