Death Certificate, Be Not Proud

It’s not every day that you get death-related news that makes you chuckle. But, last week, Thane Municipal Corporation obliged when it called up an officially deceased gentleman to ask him to collect his death certificate, thank you. Now, Chandrashekhar Desai is a common name in western India. But, still, getting the news that one has died from ‘someone else’ can be unsettling, not to mention a bit humiliating. In its defence, the Thane civic authorities used the oldest trick in the Indian book — buck-passing — by stating that it ‘got the list from the Pune office’. Quite clearly, between Thane and Pune lies purgatory, that madhya pradesh where souls get purified before going to heaven — or that other place. Chandrashekharji was, seemingly, not purified enough.

Thane office has put down Desai’s existential confusion to — another traditional Indian ‘reason’ for botch-ups — ‘technical error’. While many have found a laughing matter in the miscommunication between Thane and Pune and that between Thane and Desai, it is worth remembering that being wrong about someone’s death is far, far better than being wrong about someone living. We wish Desai a long, healthy life. And Thane — Pune, purgatory or to wherever it may concern — better collection and collation of data, especially as big data as those pertaining to life and death.