I had to face yet another instance of What's-your-surname-ing over here. It's really exasperating to have to explain every time that I come from a place in India where having a surname is not really the practice.
The first time I came across this was when I had been to a police station to report the loss of my mobile phone. The constable who was on duty at that time wrote my first name (my only name!) down, and then waited for me to say my surname too. When I repeated the same name as my father's name too, he looked at me with more than a hint of irritation and said, "But I am asking you your father's name!" I patiently explained that I come from South India where the practice of last names is not generally followed. He gave me a It-takes-all-kinds-to-make-this-world look and went on with taking down the complaint! I cursed him in my mind for his attitude of superiority, and that too over a last name!
Since then, there have been other occasions when people have given me a puzzled look on being informed (politely) that I don't have a surname. What the heck, a guy has absolutely every right to NOT have a last name! It's your problem, not mine, if you refuse to believe that people can exist, and quite happily too, without a last name.
Maybe I should have been a married woman: that way, nobody would have bothered me with last names. Maybe!
1 comment:
trust me, married women have their bad days too. and too many marriages has its own problems. i walk about with a name that sounds good but i owe nothing to it! guess you know the rest ;)
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