WHILE working in the advertising department of a newspaper, one comes into contact with a variety of people, especially when entrusted with public dealing. Some of them drop in to point out certain errors and acts of omission and commission in their ads. Although every care is taken to pre-empt chances of an error, sometimes a small lapse creeps in and lands the entire department in hot waters. Ironically, we admen come to know about our mistakes only when the paper is ready to be delivered at your doorstep. After two decades in the profession, I have a treasure-house of memories, some sweet, some sour.

One fine morning, as I was sitting in the office, the phone bell buzzed: "Put me on to the advertisement manager," a fiery female voice left me floored as I fumbled for words. "Madam, he hasn't come so far. Can I take a message for him?" I asked the caller. "Whom I am talking to, then?" she fired back. Before I could utter a word in reply, she cut short the conversation with a curt: "What the hell you have published in today's paper? You have played a silly prank on me by printing my age in the matrimonial ad as ‘92 years’ instead of ‘29 years’. I hadn't run this ad for my great great granny". She went on without a pause. I tried to mollify her by giving reasons for the unintended error and offered a free reprint, to which she instantly agreed. She told me to exercise greater caution the next time.

Another ‘Cal’ (short for Calcutta) girl hailing from a highly-placed family, rang up to shower on us her legitimate wrath the other day. It so happened that the word ‘Cal’ had been misspelt as ‘Call’. The opening line of the ad, much to her dismay, read thus: "Suitable match for a Call girl..." Hanging my head in shame, I apologised to her for the mistake and pacified her by promising a free insertion in the top position of the column. She banged down the receiver contemptuously, saying, "Fie on you, poor fellows!"

A business baron, wanting to sell his ancestral house, ran an ad in the newspaper for a wider choice of takers. He scribbled the text of the proposed ad and handed the manuscript to the booking official. In a tearing hurry, he forgot to write the word ‘hold’, an omission which also escaped notice of the hawk-eyed booking official, as also of the page reader. The following morning proved nightmarish for the beleaguered baron when he discovered that the word ‘hold’ had been omitted in print, thus making a mockery of the intended message, which read thus: "For sale of free house, please contact..." After attending a couple of phone calls from prospective buyers of a "free" house, the irate tycoon rang up the department to shower his ire: "You guys have landed me in a predicament. Must not you be dragged to the court of law lest you should repeat this?" The exasperated advertiser felt ashamed of his behaviour when he was told, that he had himself omitted the expression ‘hold’ in the manuscript.

I recall with a tinge of trepidation how a proud father of a girl who had topped in the university wanted to print her photograph in the newspaper and had turned wild on discovering that her photo had been exchanged with a photo in the ‘missing persons' column, announcing the disappearance of a girl. Some of his worried relatives and friends rang up while others came to his home to express their concern over his "missing" daughter. The infuriated father dashed off a stinker to us to give went to his pent-up fury. We had no option but to tender our unqualified apology and flash the photo again, free of charge, of course, with a note of ‘regrets’. On the other hand the parents of the missing girl told us that they had been embarrassed by the congratulatory messages and telephone calls from their kin expressing their happiness at the achievement of their promising daughter.

I am reminded of yet another occasion when the "10 per cent" seasonal discount that a small-time saree dealer intended to offer his customers had been, through an oversight, printed as "100 per cent discount", resulting in total chaos at his establishment. He had to perforce down the shutters to avoid the rush of prospective buyers who eagerly responded to the ‘exciting’ offer.

I vividly recall how a lecturer friend, the ‘proud winner’ of a raffle lottery draw, had doled out his entire month's salary and the little that he had saved in his bank account to mark the occasion of his becoming a lakhpati. For a select few, it had been an orgy of booze. He was a shattered man when he spotted a corrigendum in the newspaper announcing that the prize-winning ticket number had been inadvertently misprinted. The lakhpati in the making, had to borrow money from a colleague to keep the kitchen fires burning till the next pay day.

The other day, a gentleman reported to us that he had been put to great inconvenience for no fault of his. His telephone number had wrongly appeared in a ‘for sale’ ad. We apologised to him for the lapse and requested him to bear with us, for there was no way to make amends.

The other day, all went haywire for a prestigious Brahmin family seeking "compatible" match for their "charming" daughter. The father drove down to the newspaper office to point out that the expression "charming girl" had been wrongly printed as "chamar girl". In yet another instance, the "Sandhu" parents of a young Software Engineer, ran an ad in the paper for a wider choice. The boy's parents got up early morning to see the printer's devil playing the trick. The ad they had given for publication had appeared as: "Suitable match for a sadhu (saint) boy". Another Sikh family seeking matrimonial alliance for their smart, sturdily-built and city-bred son, got the shock of their lives on discovering that their ad had been misprinted as: "...match for a sick boy..."