Do I Look Dead to You?

Hi ya! How's it going? Pour some dark nectar into your mug and munch on a virtual chupati  while I tell you about the ordeal of Asharfi Devi. 

India's notorious bureaucracy records deaths particularly ineptly, to the advantage of men seeking an alternative to divorce. They find it easier merely to swear out a death certificate on one wife so they can marry another, but that means the first wife will face years, and maybe decades, of campaigning to convince officials that she is not dead. 

BBC News chronicled the plight of Ms. Asharfi Devi, now 64, in September as she was finally declared "alive" after being deserted by her husband at age 23 and ruled dead at age 40. 

After Devi finally earned a hearing and brought relatives and evidence to the village council, deliberations took eight more months. Notwithstanding the ruling, the husband stuck to his story.

"Hello. My name is Asharfi Devi."
"It cannot be for you are dead."
"Do I look dead to you?"
"What you look like to me is not important. It says here on your death certificate that you are dead."
"I don't care what your erroneous paper says. I am very much alive!"
"So you say! Papers never lie! I am totally flummoxed as to why you dead women don't understand that?" 
"You want to be flummoxed? Come over to this side of the counter and I'll show you flummoxed...and you won't be able to walk upright for a week!"

See ya, eh!

Bob