India, June 21 -- When we hear the word caregiver, we picture a hospital room, a medication chart, someone being helped into bed. The image is clinical and professional. It has little to do with what most caregiving actually looks like, which is a partner noticing that the coffee hasn't been touched, a mother learning to read a particular silence, a friend who knows which calls to answer at 2 am and which ones mean something different.

Many people do not recognise themselves in the word at all. "I'm just being a good partner," they say. "Of course, I'm her mom." Love disguises the role, which is part of why the role so rarely gets named and why the people inside it so rarely get support.

After a surgery, through a long illness, or insid...