The 72nd death. [Text by Richard Weiderman] Word has reached us of the passing of Richard Weiderman. The cause of his demise has not been reported. Mr Weiderman always considered himself like everyone else, someone pretty much undistinguished from others. Just another bean in the bag. There was much evidence to support his conclusion. At five foot ten inches he was average in height. He was neither handsome nor hideous. Everyone has to have a face, and he had one--an unremarkable, generic one. His was only another face in the crowd. He was, however, a man of many interests. He tried them on for a while before moving on to the next one. He wore each like a new set of clothes, only

The 71st death. [Text by Nandini Nair; photo by Anupama Sivan] Nandini Nair, reporter and editor, 32, passed away early this morning. She was at her yoga class and was determined to do a handstand. This was despite the warnings of her parents and sister, who always doubted her upper-body strength. The end was swift and her last thoughts flitted between whether she had Harpiced her commode the previous night and if Toni Morrison's new book would be excellent. If she had any last words it would be have been – ‘I should have listened to my family.’ Those who knew Ms Nair (and there weren't too many) believed her to be loyal, funny and stupidly conscientious. They all confessed that she made

The 70th death. [Text by Farooq Soomro; photo by Waseem Nawaz] A friend once described Farooq Soomro as a chameleon that changes its shades pompously yet blends within its surroundings without ever letting anyone know that it is an outsider. A quintessential Karachi denizen, one could only imagine his death to take place on a Karachi-esque day with plenty of drama. But no, his death did not take place under any such circumstances, for as unpredictable and erratic he was, he was taken to hospital with severe respiratory failure. Earlier in the day, he had participated in a balloon filling competition and blew nearly 39 balloons before he was rushed to the ER. Pronounced dead on arrival! He was only 39.

The 68th death. [Text by Abhijit Dutta; photo by Sebastian Ku] Fittingly, Abhijit Dutta died mid sentence, hanging from the edge of a comma. He had always been a man of great ambition. Indeed, his ambitions were so great and so many that he never found the urge or patience to accomplish any of them. Being Bengali, and that too of a lineage that included the indolent nabobs of shovabazar rajbaari and the effete poet Toru Dutt, he had a suitable disdain for anyone who suggested that he might consider putting in “real” work, in the sense of joules, to advance some of these phantom ambitions into whole beings, complete with an end. Instead, he chose to squander away a lifetime reading

The 67th death. [Text by Sayantan Ghosh; photo by a 'House Guest'] “I thought he had died long ago” -- this was the first reaction of Sayantan Ghosh’s friend Nandu when we contacted him over the phone, informing him of Mr Ghosh’s demise. Nandu, who is a fisherman in Varkala, a coastal town in Kerala, was otherwise happy to hear that his was the only number that was found on Mr Ghosh’s phone at the time of his death. The body was discovered by a neighbor who had sneaked inside Mr Ghosh's one-room apartment in Pondicherry to steal his collection of rare first editions of Albert Camus's books, the only thing he was possessive about during his final years. Mr Ghosh's half-eaten corpse

The 66th death. [Text by Alok Prasanna Kumar; photo by Ankit Goel] Alok Prasanna Kumar, a legal policy expert and collector of trivia about the Indian legal system, was found dead yesterday by the police in his flat in Hazrat Nizamuddin West. The neighbours had complained of a strong stench with no one answering to the door bell. Mr Kumar was 33. The cause of death has been determined to be exhaustion and dehydration which resulted from a marathon session of playing Starcraft 2: Legacy of the Void - an end eerily similar to the so-called 'Self-Written Obituary' he had submitted two years ago to the popular website 'The Delhi Walla'. The Delhi Police are presently questioning the owner of the website, Mayank

The 64th death. [Text by Ashlin Mathew; photo by Shiv Ahuja] Ashlin Mathew, known for her strong opinions, judgmental looks and sunny personality, gurgled and died while in mid-speech in one of her homes between Goa and Diu. She was 90. She is survived by her partner, two sons, three sisters, three cats and four dogs. This spirited woman always thought she had no room for drama in her life and all her friends believed otherwise. Giving in to popular demand, her death was quite dramatic. Ms Mathew was reminiscing about one of her submarine sexcapades with Vladmir Putin’s illegitimate son Alexei to 20-something-year-olds in an attempt to get them to write porn. Ms Mathew was the secret publisher of the porn

The 63rd death. [Text by Stuart Freedman; photo © E.Corbin] The English photographer Stuart Freedman died today in Delhi, appropriately in beautiful light at dusk in his favourite seat, on the balcony of his beloved Indian Coffee House, so reminiscent of the cafes of his London (misspent) youth. Apparently at the last, in his mind, he flew over the buildings with the Kites - soaring through the languid, polluted air above a city that was both Delhi and London and all the hundreds and hundreds of cities that he’d visited in a career that spanned more than half a century. Mr Freedman grew up in a grim, grey tower block in Hackney, East London, in the 1970s and spent the rest of

The 62nd death. [Text by Ipshita Mitra; photo by Arpita Mitra] And she died one winter afternoon, without a warning, almost like the unexpected rain that evening. Ipshita Mitra was always worried about her social skills; solitude is what she preferred for company. Some who knew her enough termed it ‘agoraphobia’, and others who did not know her enough called her ‘arrogant’. She adored her friends and family. She was a good counsellor, but, often failed to resolve her own dilemmas. “She was such a black-and-white person,” says one of her friends. “Being competitive was just not her thing. For a recluse like her, it is surprising how she could survive as a journalist. Characters did not matter to her much, their

The 61st death. [Text by Anna Shipilova; photo by Tatyana Shipilova] Anna Shipilova retreated today for her heavenly abode on a cat-mobile. For she was a cat. Disguised as a human. She died after having downed a glass of dubious red wine, which is the only type that can be procured in the smallest of small towns in southern Karnataka. Like all small towns where everyone knows everyone else, this one too has its secrets. Maybe Ms Shipilova knew too much. She was very observant on her midnight prowls, or perhaps it was the wine. Ms Shipilova was a lover of morning runs (on her hind paws), hysterical realism and brown mice. She was looking after her dog Captain Barbossa, who was recovering from