There’s no best way to deal with death. You’re bludgeoned. You’re in shock. You cope as well as you can, going through the motions of rituals or daily routines, while trying to grapple with the void inside you. And there have been so many deaths of late. Some funerals you can attend. But, increasingly, e-funerals come to you via a Zoom link, and instead of condoling with the family, you’re fiddling with the viewing buttons on your laptop, to locate and ‘pin’ the speaker from 100 stamp-sized headshots of mourners on your screen, because he’s mumbling with grief and you’re trying to lip-read. But I don’t think it’s only COVID-19 that has changed everything. I think India’s relationship with death had changed radically way before it arrived.

When I was younger and we went to funerals, people would weep and wail freely, mourn, embrace and comfort each other, with fresh howls of grief going up with each family that arrived, as the details of how it happened were recounted yet again. It was all natural, spontaneous and dishevelled; people wore what they wore; sat in huddles on the floor, struggling to come to terms with their loss, aching that they had not visited more often. And then I attended a few Gujarati and Punjabi prayer/memorial meetings, and was gobsmacked how everything was event-managed in an enormous hall, ‘handling’ over a thousand mourners with clockwork precision. One of them was a formal affair, with an emcee at the mike, and an airbrushed, smiling framed photograph of the deceased, surrounded by elegant white 
liliums and rajnigandha on a table, at centre stage. The family of the deceased sat symmetrically on either side of it, all dressed in brand new, white, chikankari kurta pyjamas/salwar kameezes; not a smidgen of grief was allowed to stain their clothes. They had even hired a professional singer who sang sad Mukesh songs from a corner of the stage. Good god, I thought, will Bollywood never leave our side, even in grief? A pretty air hostess-type in a white sari helped old ladies to their seats, and offered water bottles and tissues to guests. Other bouncer-type minders firmly took your elbow, instructing you, “Sorry, you cannot meet the family now. Please be seated in the back rows until the entire ceremony is over.” After the function was over, the family of the deceased stood on stage, and everyone lined up in a queue, as Indians do at wedding receptions, to condole with the family for a few seconds, with folded hands and a mumbled ‘sorry,’ before an Uncleji herded you away.