Solitary Funerals and How The Pandemic Has Changed Grieving SARVESH TALREJA
Illustration: Reynold Mascarenhas
I lost my grandfather during Covid-19, and his funeral, attended by just a few close relatives, really brought home the meaning of the phrase, “grief is communal”. It is only in the absence of community that I feel the need for more people to validate my own sadness, to stand testament to the life my grandfather led. I am in a scene from 2001: A Space Odyssey if Stanley Kubrick’s set designer were Sindhi and the spaceship was the living room of a South Bombay skyscraper. Around me are just about a handful of people, scattered about six feet away from each other, filling the place with their muffled tears, red eyes, and unusually fashionable Covid-19 masks. I know this levity is completely unwarranted – my grandfather has passed away and we have gathered for our final farewells to the man we all loved. All around me, people try to deal with it in their own special ways. One is taking loud calls to navigate logistics, throwing sensitivity out of the window. One does a short but necessary yell at three new people who entered the minimal living room, making it unfit for 22
social-distancing guidelines. It is inappropriate because we are grieving, but wholly appropriate as the deceased man, my nana, had caught Covid-19, recovered, and came back home before passing away due to natural reasons. He now lies in a shroud the colour of the spotless plain white kurtas he wore at home. I am sitting, gobsmacked and teary-eyed, not too far from the spot where we would occasionally share a drink. I have been to only two funerals in my life, both of them my grandfathers. I have no reference point from the earlier funeral except the familiar, deep sadness that has settled in my bones, and that the demise is unexpected. “Death is still foreign enough that I find it does a discourtesy by not texting before calling”. What’s really hitting me hard though, is the difference between the two deaths.
AUTUMN RESURGAM VOLUME 63 / ISSUE 3
