Obituary Advertisements in Deccan Chronicle
I often find that photographs are of odd sizes, leaving a lot of white space around. DC offers standard size for obit Ads, while advertisers use images of odd sizes, not optimized it for the size of the column. When some popular person dies, many individuals place Ads for the same dead person forcing you peer at same photo many times. I made a suggestion to Deccan Chronicle to consolidate all such Ads into one big single Ad benefiting all concerned. This appeal for respecting the dead, has not made any headway.
The photographs in obituary Ads compete in
quality only with photos in passport or Aadhar. The photos themselves tell a
lot – just look at the spects, uniform, mush, drooping eyes, mouth etc. Some
look so young that makes it mandatory to check DOB and DOD. I cannot find any reason for this laxity, except
that family members of the dead person may be hard up for time or are too
confused. Most relatives might have been predicting the D-day to be far off but
were caught unawares.
On the contents, I may comment that more Christians
than others use it best. By studying the text, one may learn different practices
of various communities. Anniversary and remembrance Ads are intriguing – how long
should one be remembered? Sometimes birthday
Ads show up along with Obit Ads creating confusion.
The number of people joining to condole the
death is amazing. It is one thing to help the reader know WHO is dead but it is
another thing to let us know all his relatives. In order to maximise space
utilization, some people stuff the entry with so much text that even reading
TOI matrimonial Classified Ad on a Sunday will be much easier.
I wonder what comments YOU might be having
when that ‘once-in-a- lifetime-event’ in my case is advertised!
