Your parent is not ill. They are alone.

Most of the calls we get do not start with a medical problem. They start with someone in Bengaluru or Toronto noticing that the phone calls home have got shorter, that the fridge has the same vegetables in it as last week, and that nobody has visited since Diwali.

Saanjh does not do nursing. We do not give injections, we do not lift anyone out of a bed, and we will tell you plainly when what your parent needs is a nurse and not us. What we do is turn up, three afternoons a week, and stay for three hours — because loneliness is a health condition and it responds to being treated like one.

The first month, my father barely spoke to Kavita. The fourth month, he was annoyed if she was five minutes late.

What the three hours are actually spent on

• Talking. Usually about the same things, which is fine, and which is most of it.
• A walk, if the knees allow — around the society compound, or as far as the Kalyani Nagar promenade.
• Tea, and often cooking together, because a kitchen gives a conversation somewhere to go.
• The small admin that quietly stops happening: bill payments, the pharmacy run, the electrician who never came.
• Medication reminders, and a written note if something looks different from last week.