One of my favourite phrases is Allah Mian mainu chuk le. It’s probably not a very good idea to mutter this out loud at a funeral, but when the same person who made me cry at a funeral when I was 14 was able to do so at another one over 20 years later, I found myself wishing Death would take me too while it was doing the rounds.

It is widely acknowledged that a funeral is the worst day of someone’s life, but for some inexplicable reason, funerals also tend to bring out the worst of people, and the worst in people. At any given funeral, theres one person — or five — who has been afflicted with main character syndrome. Look around you in the white shamiana, and you will find them. They wail the loudest, they complain the most. They come to sympathise, but have little empathy to offer — in fact, they’ll send you running into the arms of the nearest therapist. They are swanning around in white, lurking around every corner, eyes and limbs suddenly multiplied — and they have many, many questions: How did they die? How did the body look? Who went to the graveyard? How many people were at the prayers? Have you gained weight? Who did they leave their money to? Do you have photos [of the body, of course, a totally normal thing to ask]? What will you do now? And really, you’re looking “healthy”, have you gained weight? What did they say? Did they say goodbye? Can I see the body? What were their last words? Did they remember God? Did they remember me, the person who hasn’t seen them in ten years? They ask “were they very ill?” in a gratingly naive, Paris Hilton’s fake baby voice, even if they know that the person was in the throes of a terminal illness. They will then instantly compare the deceased’s symptoms to some unrelated minor medical issue they’re experiencing themselves. They proclaim in loud whispers how the deceased was really not a very good person — or that they were inseparable, even though they haven’t seen them in years. They just had a dream about them. (I have a special fondness for these people, because they are usually rather removed from the deceased, and their dreams are a wild projection of how they perceive the person.) Who cried at the funeral? Did you? Did she? Did they? Did you know that I cried too?

They’re happy to trip you up as you exhaustedly lug trays of teacups around; they inevitably find some quibble with the qorma. They are newly minted medical professionals, ready to offer a complete diagnosis of the deceased — and all the ways they could have been saved, if only they’d gone to so-and-so doctor. If the circumstances of the deaths are suspicious, there they are, scalpels out for a post-mortem, ready to dig up graves, join the police investigation, skulk around back alleys to find witnesses.

They watch over like hawks. They have many, many rules, and you, dear mourner, have broken all of them. They are the guardians of what you should be wearing (or not), what kind of food should be served, if women should go to the graveyard. They admonish you if you cry, cluck away about your heartlessness if you dont cry enough. They tell you that you look tired, and then ask you for a hot cup of tea as the one they’re holding is now a tad less warm than they personally prefer. To them, grief is a performance, a competition in which hysterics must always win out. If they ever hear laughter in a happy remembrance of the deceased they will scold you roundly enough to send you to an early grave. They spend hours pontificating about the power of prayer, without somehow never moving past page one of the prayer book they’re reading. It’s almost as if they have come to see a performance: come one and all, come see the bereaved family! Everybody gets a prize if you can make the grieving widow/widower/child/grandchild cry!

There is no escape from them: they will find you, and they will find a way to hurt you.

None of this is an exaggeration, and if you don’t believe me, ask a bereaved friend, and their horror stories will likely make these descriptions pale in comparison. People think this kind of behaviour is the domain of older people, but I regret to inform you that people of all ages are just as capable of behaving like a dreaded uncle or aunt.

Why do people act this way? Surely it’s not that we are not exposed to death, or that funerals are closed-door, invitation-only, closed-casket affairs like in other places in the world. We talk about death all the time. It is in the white tents strung up in the streets, the obituary notices announced from loudspeakers, the culture of condolence calls.

Perhaps it is because death suspends us into the surreal; and it is so blatant. Shrouds, white sheets on the floors, rose petals, incense. The split-screen nature of death and funerals; families and houses transformed, lives changed, the disconcerting sensation of stepping out of a funeral and being back into your normal life where no one is dead, where we get to phone our parent(s) and argue with them, while your friend or cousin or lover has just lost theirs. Funerals force us to come into contact with long-lost acquaintances and distant relatives; people we vowed we would never see — or speak to — again, a lifetime’s worth of everyone the deceased crossed paths with.

Or perhaps it is the language of death: the words to mourn and condole seem completely wrong. Phrases like ‘I’m sorry’, ‘they’re in a better place’, ‘at least theyre not in pain’ — they make no sense when faced with death, when you have to say them out loud, and yet, this is all we have.

Still, none of this means you need to turn into a small child let loose at a wedding. You don’t need to ask questions. If someone wants to volunteer details, sure. But you absolutely don’t need to say ‘what happened?’ or ask about their last words. If you’re bored at a funeral, please stare into space instead of scrolling on your phone — or, horror — filming it. Be mindful that the situation someone is in is incomparable to anything else. While I’m sure asking someone if they would like to go for a coffee to “get a break from all this” is a really well-meaning idea in theory, they’re being pulled in 200 directions, and perhaps don’t want to go to Xander’s right at that moment.

The main character syndrome evoked by funerals also often extends to the people who like to sit them out; who proclaim loudly that they ‘find funerals too difficult’ as some way of absolving themselves of condolence calls for life. That’s fine if it is actually triggering, and not an abstract concept. But it’s probably worth remembering that it is infinitely worse for the person directly affected, and the one thing you can repeat to yourself is that this isn’t about you. You are not a reality show star filming a confessional. You are not a politician there to offer condolences before you ask for the bereaved to remember you on election day. You are not being asked to break out into a rendition of Candle in the Wind. You have one job: hug the bereaved, sit in a corner, and that’s about it. The one thing you can do is spare people intentional — and unintentional — pain and grief. Meanwhile, I’ll be hoping for divine intervention to make the questions stop, and to not have to reheat the qorma again.