How is Shaila's grandmother described in the novel, The Management of Grief?

Shaila's grandmother is portrayed as a traditional Brahmin woman who unquestioningly fills her role as wife and female, in other words, as a submissive and second-class citizen. Her husband, Shaila's grandfather, died of diabetes when he was nineteen, leaving his wife a widow at age sixteen. Considering herself a "harbinger of bad luck," she shaved her head and lived in self-imposed suffering and seclusion.