Illustrator Vishwajyoti Ghosh learnt his lesson the hard way when his nicely-worded classified aimed at selling his car, went unnoticed. That's when he realised that Indian classifieds have a secret code of their own. He raged on to write the perfect Indian classified, and as fate would have it, the car was sold, but only on third attempt. But that's not where the matter ended. Ghosh got hooked on to classifieds and began collecting them. Chennai-based publishing house Blaft Publications has published the best of the lot in the form of a postcard collection, Times New Roman & Countrymen.

"I hope they are not seen as collector's items, because we want the book to be interactive in nature. I want people to send the postcards out to friends and family," says the Delhi-based artist, who was amazed at the variety of services rendered in classifieds, and the words used to sell them! He came across people who claimed to help an ordinary man write his biography, someone who could teach you pig farming, and another who warned the public about his elder son who was "out of control. Any person dealing with him will do so at his own risk."

"It was a modern India I didn't know existed, so, when I started the postcard book, I set the classifieds against iconography I grew up with." Each postcard has been reproduced featuring real classified advertisements from Delhi newspapers, old Bollywood posters, and a few images from Raja Ravi Varma's paintings. The colours are bold, the pictures funny and images out of middle-class Indian life are hilarious. Here's a sample: "Honey-friendship club. All ages male can do the friendship with high profile females, widows divorsee etc and earn daily". Or "SOFT & SILKY ESCORT, Indian, Russian, Turkey, like models girls B'ful female massseures, avail 24 hrs".

Brilliant. When is the next edition coming out?