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Battle of the chairs at the funeral

I went to a funeral the other day and was struck by the role the chairs play in such a sombre occasion.

This funeral just happened to be at a small village on the peripheries of the city where people behave and act like city-dwellers. At any funeral, the fiercest battles are fought not with words... but with chairs. There was a VIP seating and ordinary seating. VIP seating is mainly for the more important mourners who are there to cry and shake hands with the speakers after eulogising the deceased. At this funeral they had decided that VIP seating mourners are the only ones that would get thirsty and on their velvety seats there was a bottle of mineral water. In this little village no one from ordinary seating is allowed to get thirsty. I got ordinary seating. The reason I was ushered here was mainly because I was bunched with the ‘He Knew My Cousin's Friend's Barber’ pseudo-mourners.

Basically this is the lot that doesn’t even know whether the deceased is a toddler, an old man or a teenager. This cohort forms a large section of the mourners – around 50% - at any funeral. We were with the distant cousins who had not seen the deceased in a decade or so.

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