One of the good actors in Bollywood, Sadashiv Amarapurkar died recently (RIP).
I was reading the news and came across this paragraph on Times Of India
Sadashiv Amrapurkar is married to his high school sweetheart, Sunanda Karmarkar. Be it in school or college, Sadashiv was always interested in acting.
I wonder using a present verb there or that's okay? Do we use the present tense verb to describe some dead person's relation? To me, Sadashiv Amrapurkar was married… seems preferable.
Best Answer
It should be 'was married' - I'm not sure of the custom in India, but in my experience, marriage (like most earthly institutions) ends when either party passes away. Indeed, Christian wedding vows make explicit reference to this with the line "Til death do us part".
I suppose his wife could still consider herself married to him, but that would be a personal thing. Once one party to a marriage is dead, so is the marriage.