Do Gods Read Newspapers?

Do gods read newspapers? It is a question that has been troubling me for some time. If so, do they subscribe to all the newspapers published around the world? Or only a select few? What languages do the gods prefer? English? Arabic? Hebrew? Malayalam? I will never know.

These nagging questions rake my mind whenever I see advertisements praying “eternal peace to departed souls” or for “favours received” addressed seemingly to an “Almighty”. The former category of advertisements is prevalent in Dubai, the latter I see mostly in the Malayalam dailies from the southern state of Kerala India.

An example is the two condolence advertisements (3 col x 21 cms.) by a large Dubai based FMCG company (Gulf News, August 22, 2007) for two of their managers who lost their dear fathers recently. The ads read “We express our heartfelt condolences to” [Name, and designation of the employee], “and his family on the sad demise of his,” [father/mother/wife and name of the deceased] “who passed away on” [date]. The company also implores “We pray to God to rest his soul in eternal peace”. There is a similar ad inserted by yet another company condoling the death of the wife of a top executive (Gulf News, August 23, 2007). The template of all three ads is identical, you just insert different names.

Now there is confusion; a lot of confusion.

1. It appears that one of the dead men is a Muslim and the other a Christian. The unfortunate (or fortunate – depending on your viewpoint) lady is a Hindu. They all probably believed in entirely different gods (assuming none of them were atheists). That means Gulf News must have subscriptions from all gods and deities or deliver complimentary copies every day to their abodes, wherever that might be (ads are not published in their on-line edition, so that possibility is ruled out).
   
2. The position of an employee within the company, who is bereaved of a kin, determines the size of the condolence ad. In general, they do not insert ads for low ranking workers. The quota goes some thing like this - a small ad for middle managers, quarter page for senior managers, half-page for owners of smaller companies and full page ads for owners or directors of large companies. Does size matter to God? Is there a direct correlation between the size of an ad and the duration of ‘eternal peace’ granted to that individual soul?
   
3. Do all these gods read English? Perhaps Jesus can – as asserted by a Texas Governor who said “If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it ought to be good enough for the children of Texas.” (MA Ferguson 1875-1961). However, scholars disagree; they say Jesus spoke Aramaic, with a smattering of Hebrew and Greek. We in this part of the world firmly believe that God only speaks classical Arabic – his sayings lose validity if anyone attempts translation into other languages. I do not know what the Hindu gods speak, perhaps Sanskrit, the ancient but dead language of India. Then again, if Sanskrit is indeed the language of gods, why did they let it die?
   
4. A prayer for eternal peace implies the existence of eternal pandemonium or hell awaiting certain other souls. None of the scriptures seem to agree on the criteria for awarding this judgment; it varies from religion to religion and is in general, mutually inconsistent. What will happen to the poor souls, whose sponsors do not insert ads in their favour? Will they never attain “eternal peace”?
   
5. Most people believe their God is omniscient – in that case, He already knows about the bereavement and has decided what to do with that soul. Will He be swayed by an imploration through the print media? Use your common sense to arrive at your own conclusion. In that case, what is the whole purpose of these advertisements?

These are questions with irrefutability attached to any answers you will come up with. Nobody can prove or disprove their answers. It is just a matter or faith!

Inserting an ad in a newspaper like Gulf News will cost a lot of money. It goes without saying that the only party that benefits from this exercise is the newspaper. It is a good source of income for them without any marketing efforts and they will never discourage this practice. Perhaps the advertisers believe these newspapers are peace brokers for the departed souls.

I have one last question. Are these companies not on talking terms with their employees? Can’t their MD or somebody senior, give a personal call to the concerned employee and console him/her or even sent them a condolence by email? And thus save the company a lot of money? Or donate it to charity?