Now there is no need to leave your car at all...

I read today in the Chicago Tribune an article about "The Impressive Casket Co.", TICC for short, that perked me up a great deal. I am sure that most of you will want to know about the services provided by TICC since at some point in time you will certainly need them. It simply cannot be avoided. You see, TICC provides funeral caskets in various models. However, it spares you a great deal of inconvenience by allowing you to select the casket by just easing your car up to a drive-through window (see footnote 1). Yes, it is no longer necessary to wander into a tomb full of empty caskets and launch into the depressing task of selecting your funeral casket either for yourself or a dear family member. It can now all be done in the comfort and security of your car, and here is the bonus, you are not charged the exorbitant and exploitative fees usually tacked on by more conventional casket companies. This is fantastic. Not only is there no need to leave your car and brave muggers and the raw elements as you fight your way into a funeral home, but you also save money. However, this is not all. Such drive-through convenience has been, it seems, quickly expanded to cover virtually all further stages of the process.

Let us say the casket has been purchased and paid for. You sit in your car gloomily contemplating the next step. Assuming it is not your funeral but that of a family member or friend, you are faced with the demanding task of rushing home, cleaning up, donning a suit and rushing off to a cemetery. There, you will be forced to deal with the bereaved, press limp sweaty palms and murmur soothing condolences. This is all getting to be quite unbearable. You flip through the yellow pages and suddenly there is hope. Chapel Inc. provides the convenience of a drive through funeral visitation (see footnote 2). Once again victory has been snatched from the jaws of defeat - there is no need to leave your car at all. Apparently, as per the advertisement, Chapel Inc. can provide video coverage of three caskets at the same time (on separate TV monitors). You simply have to drive up and gaze at the TV monitor which displays the relevant deceased. Chicago Tribune, either through a bizarre oversight or possessed by ghoulish humor, states that the TV monitor s provide "live coverage". Be that as it may, you are next proffered the guest book which you dutifully sign although it involves the tedium of having to depress the button of your power window and expose your arm. Fortunately, there is no further unnecessary expenditure of energy, since you are free to leave after you have gazed upon the dear departed and signed the book. Forget sweaty palms and the meaningless platitudes that you may have had to utter. This is so simple. This is a heartening development and I for one look at it as an inevitable consequence of motorization.

Consider the following. There are three important events in one's life: Birth, Marriage, and Death (for Hindus, the first and last events are of course endlessly repeated). Now, we are located at a point in time where it is possible to achieve all three without leaving our cars at all. Fact one: There are many people alive and well today who were conceived in the backseat of a car. I am sure you will agree that it is entirely possible that a proportion of such conceptions also resulted in birth, also in the back seat of a car. Doubtless due to a traffic jam on the Dan Ryan, or fate, or just probability. After all, the more time you spend in a car the more chance there is that someone will be born in it (with a bit of healthy cooperation between the sexes). Fact two: I also recently read that there was a man whose last wish it was to be buried in his Chrysler. I don't mean that his casket be left for all eternity in the family car, but that his body be placed in the car, and the whole mechanical thing be placed in the usual 6 foot and covered with soil. Frightfully expensive it was, and massive complaints from the clergy ensued. But he had his way, and buried he was, resplendently attired in his best suit, behind the steering, staring out the windshield. I approve of this too since it carries motorization to the logical extreme.

Having achieved the two anchoring events in life without leaving the car, I must digress from the factual to that which is possible: Drive through weddings. While I may have been a little unenthusiastic, although resigned, to the above two events, I must say I positively shout for joy at the prospect of a drive-through wedding. Avoid all those over-dressed people who turn maudlin and start to weep, people kissing at the slightest provocation, tedious speeches, over-bearing drunken relatives of the bride and groom, wistful faces overcome by the tenderness of the moment. Just appalling. A simple drive-through wedding would get the business over with quickly. Then we can go home, dress in old baggy clothes, put our feet up, munch on junk food and watch violent movies on TV. It would be so much better if we could do all this in the car. But I am confident we shall get there soon. So a drive-through wedding will offer incomparable opportunities to avoid a wet and sniffly wedding. Invitations would be issued to cars only. Just pull-up and your registration number will be announced, look at the joyous couple seated in their two-seaters through closed circuit TV, mutter your congratulations through the microphone, all the while maintaining a discreet distance from all manner of odious drive-through relatives and guests. Slices of cake and the obligatory glass of plonk will be delivered to your car by discreet waiters. There is no need to get out. There is no need to leave your car at all. I suspect that such a marriage will have greater chance of success if only because there will be fewer complaints about the behavior of relatives, thus preventing the seeds of discord from being sown.

My friends, sadly I must leave. This epistle has taken me the better part of an hour and I have screaming hordes of colleagues demanding my undivided attention to research matters. I have only one thing to say to you: If you have a car, I hope you are reading this while you luxuriate in its comfort. If you don't have a car, I suggest that you make efforts to procure one at once. To paraphrase Rabindranath Tagore: "Be there a person with soul so dead, who does not yet possess a car..."

Footnotes:
1. Chicago Tribune, Thursday, April 9 1998.
2. ibid. I am not making this up. There really is a company (by some other name) in Chicago that provides this vital service.
3. Postscript: Soon after mass-mailing the above piece, I was inundated with numerous emails complaining that drive through weddings are not fiction, but are indeed a fact. In Las Vegas, I have been informed, such weddings are commonplace. I plead that this only proves my point.