Devangshu Datta: Billboards in the time of mourning

VIEWPOINT

There are two routes between my residence (Nizamuddin) and the nearest ATM (Jangpura). Route A is a 3-km crawl through the crowded lanes of Bhogal market. That's guaranteed to take a minimum of 20 minutes.

Route B is a 5-km journey along the wider expanses of Mathura Road and Tito Marg. That takes about 10 minutes. I always take route B unless I need to do some shopping on the way. The extra petrol consumption can be justified in terms of the aggravation saved.

This road runs past the electric crematorium on Lodi Road. That's one point where jams can arise. There's quite a lot of parking inside the crematorium but mourners can spill over into the road. This is especially likely to happen if a VIP has been inconsiderate enough to have shuffled off the mortal coil at such a time as to ensure that his last journey coincides with my trip to the ATM.

However, the average VIP is a long-lived, deeply superstitious traditionalist, whose last wishes generally include the desire to be burnt on a wooden pyre rather than in an electric furnace. So, this occurs less often than you would expect, given the elderly VIP population of Delhi. It's a wide road, so even masses of mourners rarely cause a complete jam.

The crematorium is an interesting place. In appearance, it is the usual, unimaginative, squat single-storeyed building, surrounded by a cursorily-maintained garden. The design is obviously driven by utility. I guess when you've seen one municipal crematorium, you've seen the lot.

But like all places where death holds centre stage, the Lodi Road crematorium provides a locus for surreal thoughts. On one occasion, I watched bemused as a pizza-delivery boy wove through traffic, screeched to a halt at the gate and charged inside, cradling his red-and-blue delivery bag.

Logically, one is aware that there are many municipal employees working inside that building. It was close to lunchtime and there is absolutely no reason why the minions of the MCD should be deprived of pepperoni when they're feeling peckish. Nevertheless, it caused an instant of discontinuity, sparking visions of mourners waiting in a long queue for their turn at their furnace and seeking to bury their grief in jalapenos.

Another time, an unhappy BPO employee told me that he went to the crematorium to cheer up after he'd had it up to here with idiot Americans. The sweet-sour stench of oxidising corpses and the general atmosphere of doom and despair helped him regain his perspective after a long shift of helping techno-illiterates recover lost PINs.

All in all, the crematorium is not a bad place to be caught in a traffic jam. Failing all else, you can just stare at the billboards. The place has a long "frontage" on the main road and the MCD has a commendable attitude towards frontage; it believes in using it to generate revenue through the judicious placement of billboards advertising anything under the sun.

Last week, the billboards were exhorting you to buy a phone with an excellent attached camera, to read a financial daily (not this one!) and to use a fairness cream. Again I had visions of an unlikely target audience of mourners rushing off to do all this in between organising the priest and the bamboo cremation frame.

Of course, the ads are aimed at passing traffic rather than mourners, and obviously it's a good spot to put up billboards since passing traffic (such as yours truly) does notice these. Most people will not register the incongruity of the location and there's no point being offended if it helps the MCD balance its budgets and continue to offer subsidised cremation rates.

It's a healthy attitude: In the midst of death, enjoy consumerist existence while you can. And the crassness quite pales besides that of the funeral parlour on Mumbai's SV Road, where the billboard says, "When you drop dead, drop in!"