OBITUARY ODES

 As sorrowful as deaths are, we live in a part of the world, where there is an impending urgency to let the world know of your dear one’s parting. Local newspapers report the death and the very next morning, voracious readers of the obituary columns discover it. This long-standing legacy of local newspapers devoting a full-fledged page to obituary has often got me contemplating how relevant the news of ‘death’ is. 

Even after leaving the wretched material world, it would be immodestly innocent to be under the fallacy that the obituary is a random montage put together by the whims and fancies of the editor. It was a rather late discovery that figures (of money) have to be paid for these lifeless figures to figure in your local daily. 

As the social prestige meter goes higher, you will be assigned a fairly large space; a mid-life picture of the expired duly placed, a verbally loaded ad-nauseam line with expensive flowers wreathing the matter. The lucky ones will have the space annually preserved ‘in loving memory’ for eternity. 

Living is no easy task and it seems like dying is not easy either. Preserving one’s lived reputation becomes all the more important when dead than when alive. After all, the greedy mortals are to blame, for they make life equally difficult for the dead too that they can hardly rest in peace!