Chronicle of a Funeral Webcast: Mediating Death in the Time of COVID-19

Images of funeral pyres cramped into makeshift crematoria and shots of numerous shallow graves along riverbanks have come to define the second COVID-19 wave that hit India in 2021. ¹ The recurring references to a lack of wood and space brought unusual attention to the material aspects of death rituals. And yet, because people were not able to gather in person to participate in the events that surround the death of a loved one, death also never felt more abstract, more distant. A privileged few mitigated the absence to a degree by participating in funerals via Zoom, Facetime, Skype and other forms of video communication. The mediatory presence of screens at funerals framed the very real loss of a person as something happening to someone else because Zoom funerals resembled surveillance or body-cam videos as they are replayed on the news with all their shaky aesthetics of authenticity. Those too are events we know to be real, but events that are ultimately at a safe distance from us. The only difference with funerals is that the distance does not feel safe; it feels imposed and cruel.

In the midst of a strict quarantine in Delhi, one of my aunts died. For her closest relatives, the grief of the loss was doubled by the impossibility of people gathering together for her funeral. Ordinarily, people begin gathering at the deceased’s house before the body is taken to the crematorium. In addition to seeing the person in his/her physical form one last time, it is also a gathering of people who are united in their grief. In Hindu rituals, the pre-cremation viewing, the actual cremation, and havans ² like the terahvin ³ are all group events where largely the same set of people meet multiple times. The social aspect of death rituals can be a powerful source of processing the loss, and it was this the pandemic made impossible. At least physically. By this stage of the pandemic in late-April 2021, everyone was well versed in the technological alternatives to in-person meetings, so even before all details could be finalised, it was understood that the last rites would be streamed for the extended family and friends via Zoom.

The first task on hand was to circulate the Zoom link among all members of the extended family, including those living abroad and would not ordinarily have attended the funeral. Since everyone knew that the last rites had to be conducted that morning, there were texts on multiple family WhatsApp groups asking for more details about the funeral. Some family members received an email with the Zoom invitation, and some got texts on family WhatsApp groups. Not unlike what happens during funerals in general, each recipient became a possible source of forwarding the information to others. A cousin who had only received the link via text asked that it be forwarded to them again, this time via email so that they could watch on a screen bigger than their phones. All the texting and emailing were also punctuated with phone calls between individuals who could use the privacy of the phone call between just them and one other person to talk more freely, ask questions, ask for tech support or comment on the discussion taking place on WhatsApp simultaneously. Thus, even in the midst of mourning, there was frenetic activity across media, platforms and screens to enable attending the funeral.

I first entered the meeting for the pre-cremation rituals with the awareness that this would be the last time I ever see my aunt weighing heavily on me. However, when I entered, I could not see my aunt. I could see what looked like lower halves of furniture in the background and a largely empty foreground. After waiting a while, I realised that this was happening because the laptop camera being used to stream the event was not at the right angle. The attempt with this awkward angle was ostensibly to capture my aunt’s body as it lay on the ground. Compared to phone cameras, laptop cameras have limited mobility as the screen is hinged to the keyboard, making it difficult to capture something on the floor while the computer is on a regular surface like a desk or a stool.

The camera angle did not change at any point in the ceremony, meaning that the laptop failed at the only reason it was even part of the event. While the Zoom Chat was being used to issue condolences, we were furiously texting people individually to express dismay over the unfortunate framing that kept us from being able to see my aunt for the last time. No one wanted to reach out to the immediate family who were in the room to ask them to adjust the camera, assuming that they were too overwhelmed to pay attention to details like the camera angle. For those of us not in the room, but still experiencing a massive loss, the framing was not a minor detail. The frustration that arose within us was primarily due to the fact that while we were ostensibly ‘in the room’ and theoretically had access to the event, we were not getting access to what the event was about.

Since we could still hear voices, we knew when it was time to take my aunt from her house. We saw some movement in front of the camera, and the face of a person as he bent down to lift my aunt’s body. As he picked her up, we saw the lower half of her body, wrapped tightly in a white sheet, but again, not her face. Eventually, someone peered into the camera to say that they are taking her to cremation ground, and will log back into the meeting from a phone once they have reached. Therefore, while the pre-cremation ritual was over, the Zoom meeting continued, with the same awkward angle, and close to 90 friends and family left to our devices knowing only that the cremation will, in fact, also be captured on Zoom, but we would have to wait in the meeting room because they could not say how soon or sudden this might be. Everyone understood the uncertainty because the colossal death toll of COVID had overwhelmed all crematoria, making it difficult to find a place for the cremation. This limbo went on for nearly three hours. Some people left the meeting, asking others to text them on their phones when the cremation was about to begin. Some decided to stay in the meeting while occupying themselves with other tasks either on or off the device that connected them to Zoom, and some decided to stay active and use the time to catch up with other family members. While some were aware that even though they may be talking to an individual, anyone who chose to stay in the meeting would be privy to the conversation, others were not, and had to be reminded. What at the havan was a hushed conversation on the sidelines was broadcast loudly here over Zoom. At some point, I heard a speaking voice in the background that I thought was my mother talking to my father sitting next to her, unaware that her mic is still on. I did not see her since the camera was off, so I could not be sure, but to me, it sounded distinctly like her. I texted her hurriedly, letting her know that her private conversation is audible to everyone else. She responded with a mix of incredulity and annoyance since she had not actually spoken at all. One gentleman seemed entirely oblivious to even the possibility of a camera being on and numerous people being able to see him and decided to push his kurta up and his pyjama a bit lower to fan his belly. Several WhatsApp texts ensued in response to this technologically hapless display, though not on family groups, only between individuals.

Two things stand out to me here: first, the funeral, that last preserve of immediate corporeality, was now a fully intermedial event. In addition to toggling between online and offline activities, most of the users were able to multitask and hop between devices or platforms using the information received on one device to access or reflect on information on the other device or platform in near perfect synchrony. Second, the negotiations between the social and the technological. On the one hand, there were people savvy enough to send some texts only to individuals and not to group chats, understanding that the Zoom meeting was a particular kind of virtual, but public, space and event with socially predetermined etiquette. On the other hand were the faux pas, some of which were, of course, due to a lack of familiarity with the Zoom interface. ⁴ Another possible explanation, however, is that at this point we had been on Zoom for several hours and the peculiarity of having the camera on and effectively inviting multiple people into our private space had worn off. While the pre-cremation ritual was a recognisable event, the period between it and the actual cremation had no particular anchoring event, leading people to assume that they could switch their social mode off. So as far as they were concerned, one event was over, and the other event was yet to begin. However, for Zoom, this was part of the event because it continued as the same meeting, not just with a recurring ID, but also without a break. Despite being a tool to work from home, Zoom is still an event-centric platform that people use for something specific, even if it is a casual chat with friends. The mic and camera functions of Zoom are therefore attached to the publicness of the event such that the error of assuming that they are no longer active because the event is over is a frequent and recurring one in the age of Zoom socialising. ⁵

The increased presence of screen cameras connecting the private and the social also demands a renegotiation of our relationship with screens in general. In most cases, the screen’s mediation implies a distance between the viewer and the profilmic event, suggesting that the viewer is safe from the consequences of the said event. Watching a cremation on a two-way (multiway?) camera reinforced the physical distance, but it ruptured the sense of safety of being behind a screen, watching something without it watching you back. I wondered more than once which of the 90 squares were looking at me, and what they thought about what they saw. The inability to know the answer to this is another instance of the separation between public and private collapsing, because ordinarily, this would be an anxiety for someone who is physically present at the scene and is aware of the possibility of being looked at and judged. While the screen is able to show us what is happening in a separate physical location in real time, in the case of the funeral in particular, and video conferences in general, it cannot completely shield us from the anxieties of physical social life.

My aunt’s son had to go to the crematorium physically to light the pyre. He left the Zoom meeting while they were looking for a spot at a crematorium. The understanding was that the one person who had accompanied him would reconnect from a different device once they had a spot. And they did. Only by the time they joined the meeting again, the pyre had been set up covering my aunt’s body completely, extinguishing our last hope of seeing my aunt. Given the COVID threat, my cousin and his wife had to leave the crematorium soon after lighting the pyre. As they left, so did the video feed giving us what felt like ‘highlights’ of an event rather than the experience that helps process the grief. The Zoom cremation therefore felt incomplete, which is probably why most of us remained in the meeting until someone peered into the camera on the host computer (which had been online since the first ritual) to tell us that they are going to end the meeting. They had to say it three times, each more apologetic, before finally logging off. Their hesitation and ours was rooted not just in dissatisfaction, but in the fact that the Zoom meeting, for its flaws, was a way to hold on to a loved one and find some comfort in the collective grief.

For those of us who would not have been able to attend the funeral even without the COVID shutdown, the flawed Zoom transmission meant the ability to participate in an event that we otherwise would not have been able to access. For everyone else, the notion of access without being able to even see my aunt one last time felt like a cruel deception of fate because despite the connection Zoom afforded, they could not even see her face. Mediation thus facilitated access while taking it away at the same time. Like it is with every other media technology, mediation is not by means of the apparatus alone, but the presence of another person who effectively dictates what we can and cannot see.