The jhoola in Nani’s house used to be Safina’s favourite place on earth. She and her cousins would lie down on it, and one of them would get down and push and then clamber back on. They used to arrange the top of the jhoola with pillows they’d filched from one of the rooms and stare at the ceiling above as the swing creaked back and forth slowly. Once or twice, one of them would hop down and get snacks – mostly long, thinly cut crescents of raw mango, sprinkled with chilli powder and salt, which they would slowly nibble on all afternoon.

Some of the menfolk were sitting on that jhoola now, talking quietly among themselves, and inadvertently, whenever someone tried to stand, putting their foot on the ground for a firmer hold, the jhoola would move back and hit their thighs, making them let out a small “oof”.

Safina watched them from a room’s windows, and felt a jolt of misgiving at the way men occupied spaces even in a funeral home. The women huddled inside the rooms while the men sat outside, their demeanour so different, so wide-shouldered, as if they were all supremely glad they weren’t the immediate family who had to be responsible for the funeral. That they could go back home and return to their regular lives, their TV shows and reels, their wife jokes on WhatsApp, their complaints to other men about women …

Safina realised she was outraged on Nani’s behalf. If she were here, none of these men would have had the temerity to even sit on that jhoola. The last time she had visited, Nani had told her that she planned to take it down because the roof wasn’t stable enough. Safina had been dismayed but she had let it go. There had been other things on her mind at that time.

Every soul shall taste death – one of the oft-repeated verses from the Quran, a verse that Nani often liked to repeat whenever anyone tried to convince her to move in with them – popped into her mind just then. And she wanted to say the verse out loud to those men, if only to startle them from their complacency.

Safina stepped out into the hall where Nani’s body lay. She felt grief well inside her, tug at her heart, filling her stomach with dread and acid and making her nauseous. She wanted to puke, but she held back. Ammi was sitting near Nani, surrounded by other women. Some of the women were whispering to each other.

“So sad she didn’t have any sons, or she wouldn’t have been living alone and she wouldn’t have died alone like this,” one woman said. Safina couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

“Is this really the time to say such things?” Ammi asked, her voice sharp and hoarse. The woman looked contrite but Ammi wasn’t done. “I kept asking her to come and live with us, but she never listened. She was independent.”

As far as Safina knew, this was not a word Ammi was fond of. She always used to talk about it with disdain. But her tenor had changed now. “Ammi didn’t want to depend on anyone, be it son or daughter.”

Good for you, Ammi, Safina thought. She wasn’t surprised at her mother’s reaction because anyone who knew Ammi knew that she wasn’t meek. Those women must have been fools to think they could badmouth their family in their house at a funeral and get away with it.

The women were suitably chastened but Safina could see one or two of them looking quite annoyed at having been put in their place. Safina wanted to sit near Nani and look at her face, but at the same time, it felt odd. It seemed as though that person wasn’t the grandmother she knew and loved but a mere shell of the person she was. So she went back to the room from where she’d observed the men earlier.

Space was something that was never lacking in Nani’s house, and given how tiny their apartment was in Bangalore, it felt luxurious to be surrounded by so much of it here. The rooms in Nani’s house were huge, walls painted a light ivory, and the floors had an intricate mosaic pattern that repeated itself, alternating with plain cream tiles. The window in Nani’s room looked out over the main road, and it was one of her favourite spots to sit and people-watch. The room she’d returned to was a sort of guest room, and the windows on one side looked out at the neighbouring house.

She remembered, all of a sudden, the game of hopscotch that she and her cousins would play here, inside the house, drawing those squares with pieces of chalk, especially when Nani slept during the afternoon. They usually wiped it away before she woke up and tried to look innocent but one day Nani had caught them in the act.

They never knew Nani could run so quickly, yelling at them, “Ghar barbaad karoge kya?” But why would Nani care if her house was ruined? That was the thought she often had as a child. Nani had no visitors, and no one lived with her. What did it matter to her if the house got a little dirtier?

Now, Safina looked around at the house, which already seemed tired and drawn within just a day of losing Nani. And without her, that luxury of space felt hollow.

She could hear Abbu’s voice now, so she moved closer to the window to listen.

“We should not delay this further,” he was saying.

“But we have to wait for her daughters to come,” another man protested. Safina didn’t know who he was.

“Yes, but it’s not a good idea to keep the body …”

Safina tuned out momentarily, her eyes glazing over, not just with grief but also fatigue. Nani was just a body now. Sickened, she turned away from there, because Abbu was going on rather officiously about how it was best to get done with the burial sooner rather than later.

Burial, funeral, janaza … Safina didn’t want to hear these words at all. They caused her stomach to twist unpleasantly.

Since Nani didn’t have any sons, Abbu was behaving like her son, as he was the oldest son-in-law, but there was something in the tone of his voice, a sort of proprietary sense, which had never been there when Nani was alive. As if Nani in her death was more to him than when she was alive.

Excerpted with permission from Have You Met Me?, Andaleeb Wajid, HarperCollins India.