New Delhi, Nov. 7 -- It's a hazy Sunday morning. Disha Wadhwani is in her kitchen, baking a sugarless banana cake. It should be ready in the next 20 minutes-6.30am on the dot. Once done, she cuts two big slices, packs them in a box, and leaves her house. A 2km walk later, she arrives at her destination: a green bench in the middle of a park in a Gurugram neighbourhood. She sits and eats a cake slice while watching people on their morning walk.

"The second piece is for my Shibu," says Wadhwani, 39, an architect and a mother of two. Shibu, a street dog turned "youngest son" of the Wadhwani family, died at the age of 5 in September 2023, two months after Wadhwani's grandmother succumbed to cancer. "We were long prepared for dadi (grandmothe...