What's in a Name ???

Call a rose by any name ... it'll still cost you money to buy and a girl to gift.

I have seen Indian parents monitor what their daughter wears outside the house. In spite of flaunting a so-called modern liberal attitude, the occasional "No, that dress is too short" or the "You can only wear that top if you wear a jacket on top of that" does the rounds of various households. A common phrase that often pops up in these monitored moments is "Don't forget that you are representing the Rai household." I was talking to a friend and figured that this is indeed a very common Indian technique, where Indian parents glamorize their family name and attach a huge amount of importance to it. "What? You failed in class. No member of the Chowdhurys has ever received a red mark on their report card", "You can't date her. After all you are a Ranganathan. What will people say", "Don't forget that when you walk out of that door, you are representing every Kumar of our family", yada, yada, yada ... we've all heard some variant of these (including the emphatic Hindi version - "bhoolna mat, tum Kapoor khandan ke bahu ho ...".

Don't you think that we assign way too much importance to our family names? Coz it's very likely that nobody even knows them. This entire post happened coz I had this hilarious visual in my mind of people actually wearing name tags in public places so that they can be held accountable. Imagine walking to a restaurant and seeing this hot dame in a skirt so short that when she puts the napkin on her thigh, her dress size doubles. You walk up to her and check out the badge she's wearing. "Aha! You are a Dutta I see. I should have guessed. Duttas are notorious folks," you say and walk off. The next morning the newspaper screams out "Duttas embarrassed again. This time in a restaurant." Now that would be truly bringing your family name down. People will then be really careful. Clubs will have hoardings saying, "No Kamats allowed" and people of the Kamat family would have to use frauduent schemes to get badges bearing the highly revered "Arora" tag :)) When the girl with the shoulderless dress gets down from the car after a night of wild partying, one of the two old neighbors would say, "Is she a Lal? Look at her dress." To this, the all knowing second man would say, "No way. Look at her badge. She is a Lalwani. The Lal's wouldn't dare to wear clothes like this. Not after their rating went down so much last year!"

Bottomline - most people don't know us. People who pass fleeting judgements abt us don't even know who their pointed fingers are aiming at. And yet we go through hours of scrutiny to uphold a tag which doesn't even exist. Why?