When my dad died in 2006, as family gathered around I was angrily adamant that his funeral should not become an educational resource as had happened with my Indian wedding. I firmly refused to have the celebrant distracted by the best way to explain the unfamiliar Hindu rites and ceremonial to a rapt and willing audience, ripe and open to learning new cultures. No. There was no way that they were going to turn my father’s funeral into a circus. In the end, it was conducted by his elder brother, my late Uncle Baloo, in a gentle and dignified manner at a full-to-capacity Beckenham Crematorium with flowers, hearse, limousine and the Lachrymosa from Mozart’s Requiem, chosen by me because he would have liked it, because I love it.

How different, then, was the final rite of passage for my mum, conducted last Friday afternoon at a no-frills local crematorium: a horizontal furnace in a ramshackle shed in rural India, the smell of burning charcoal all-pervasive. My cousin Chhaya and her husband Satish joined John and me to witness and mourn. We’d scrambled for the documentation for the trip. The British Consulate in Hong Kong were meticulous in their checks but immensely helpful in issuing me with an Emergency Passport; John’s visa arrived by email near midnight on the day before we flew, separately, into Mumbai on Thursday morning.

How basic it was. A stretcher, sheets instead of a coffin; two simple flower garlands and the everyday paraphernalia of puja. A new green sari and pinda to send her on her way. Yet all the more moving for its very simplicity. There was no euphemistic curtain swish or gentle organ music to cover my mum’s final journey, no discreet button that set the process in motion. Instead, we all helped to lift the stretcher to the height of the furnace and with a firm shove onto the rollers, she was ready to meet the shockingly fierce, fiery blast that would consume her earthly remains.

Kailash said a quick arti yesterday before he consigned my mum’s ashes to a local river. For a simple countrywoman at heart, it seemed more appropriate than high-faluting cremation ghats on the Ganges. And that was that.