Where is your Eye-Dee Card?

A couple of weeks ago, my mom had the company of ONGC'aathu maami to go to some function at BSNL Aunty's, when she got to know that the boy in SBI'aahm got his US-visa rejected twice already. I was zapped!; and went about thinking who am I? - The Bank of Baroda'aathu periya payyan?.

People, especially middle-class ones, give rather too much importance to their ID cards. I have heard quite a few saying 'their daughter is happily(?) married to a software professional'. Well, to my knowledge, say TCS employs about 1.2 lakh lot, and assuming atleast 70% of male population in it; hasn't their Son-in-law got an identity beyond that?

In the case of my family and quite a number of them in our locality for that matter, were originally from the city (most likely South Madras), and moved to the sub-urbs for the dreams of the Heads of the respective families to live in an independant house. We all settled in slowly and got acquainted to each other. At first we were known by the name of the organisation the HOF worked for. About a half of them had retired before moving in and a half of the rest now have now retired from service in the 6years that has passed, but the original tag stays on. Wonder why? Did I mention South Madras?... Well, then, none of them would have had more than 5 good things to tell about their workplace, but still would retain the name, but for, it is not they themselves who identify themselves with it, rather the identity is imposed by their neighbours on them.

This tagging goes further, to matrimony. If one looks at the modern day wedding-cards, traditional phrases like "ubhaya kucalObari", "wedding arranged for by elders with Bagawat Sankalpam and/or acharya katAksham" all have gone into fineprint. Only the list of degrees earned by the Groom and Bride, and if the institute happens to be some top-tier(?) one, gets bold fonts, position in the firm they work, etc, find prominence. It does not stop with theirs, for the Sambandis also get a chance to throw their weight all over the place, while lest one has been observent of a "SriRamajayam" or a "SrimathE Ramanujaya Namah:" that has gone missing.

Also, I happened to hear an interesting proposition to my friend's mom : "I heard your daughter works for Microsoft, my son is with IBM; I was wondering......" :P What next? ID-cards have matched ahead of their Horoscopes ?

Coming back to what am I called as... happened to know that the main road vendors(the natives btw) refer to me as "despite-being-US-return-dothi-clad-boy-who-sports-naamam-allthetime". Honoured indeed! So, the need for tinkering is only for the invading South-Madras-Middle-Class and not the locality, then.