And you do exactly what, sir?

There is a sequence of starter questions I have learnt to expect from strangers It might be a fellow next to me on a suburban train a waiting passenger in an airport lounge or some other human being in transit I have come to understand that these three questions are designed to quickly nail down precisely who I am I suspect that their real purpose is to ascertain whether I am superior inferior or equal by birth blood or caste on some unspecified social ladderThe interrogation will start with a query about what I am called What is your good nameWith a surname like Bhatt Sharma or Mukherjee Irsquod be quickly slotted as a Brahmin RespektIf I were improbably a Pasupati Kothapalli Singh or similar Irsquod be tagged as Kshatriya Fighter not to be messed withNames like Agarwal and Khandelwal would out me as a Vaishya Money Trader manIf I confessed to having some other surname Irsquod be put in the Shudra box Dailywage labourerDepending on whether I wanted to enlighten or confuse I give my name either as Gopi or unfurl the full formidable Chitoor Yegnanarayan GopinathOnce past this hurdle and following a polite delay he will pop out the second questionYou are from whereTherersquos nothing easy about this question The C in my name says I am from Chitoor which no one in my family has been to but I was born to a Tamilian mother in Kottayam Kerala while my father was from Coimbatore but born in Srivaikuntam Since my life is divided equally between Kolkata Delhi and Mumbai and I read write and speak Bengali Tamil and Hindi the jury is definitely out on I am from whereMost young Indians with crosscultural parents would probably overload heat up and shortcircuit if asked they were from where I will usually say the first place that pops into my head I once said Machu Pichu which my questioner thought was in TelanganaThe third question is the killer You do what sirYour answer to this will give everything away no returns or refunds The British ensured that we respected their companies were loyal and could not imagine working anywhere elseThe Tamilian men of my childhood routinely referred to each other by their employing corporations Thus Wimco Venkataraman Philips Ramamurthy Telco SrinivasanVoltas MahadevanDoctor accountant bricklayer migrant worker bai MBA Vice President MLA freedom fighter mdash you are defined by the work you do most of the day the thing that puts bread on your table or money in your bank or even just life in your bodyBut are you really that simpleIt has a name workism Some say itrsquos uniquely capitalist or at least very American You are what you do and that defines the corpus of your life on earth You spend your first two decades prepping for the thing you will do in the next four decades After 60 or 65 when they put you out to pasture you will define yourself by what you used to do Myself retired engineer public works departmentHow would you answer that tricky third question if you actually do nothing all day What if you were joblessThatrsquos a growing number in India you and I know that According to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy in June this year 92 per cent of Indians did nothing all day up from 7 per cent a month earlier Another survey showed that women who do nothing all day hit 185 per cent up from 151 per cent the same time last year and exceeding the national average The number of people willing to work or actively looking for work went up to 414 per cent from 399 per centThe truth will not set you free here So you do what we all learn to domdashyou fudge You say Irsquom a consultant subtly conveying that you are an expert in something Or Irsquom taking a sabbatical which makes you sound scholarly Irsquom into crypto you say implying that you rake in moolah while sitting on your suburban bottom and doing complex mathsIf you look young and can pull it off try your luck with Irsquom an influencer or Irsquom a disruptor slyly hinting that you run a worldchanging ElonMuskfunded startupIf woman you could doom yourself with Irsquom a housewife or I freelance but donrsquot Go instead for Irsquom a postnatal caregiver ormdashGod bless COVID19mdashI WFH these daysThe clever thing of course is not to fall into the workism trap at all On days with an r I say Irsquom a culinary operations manager cook who writes for a living on other days I like to be a home decor specialist telling the maid what to do while supporting strategic communication job huntingFor the unemployed footloose and desperate look for a title that implies good looks stunning intelligence white teeth and a winning smileI recommend Director of First ImpressionsYou can reach C Y Gopinath at cygopigmailcomSend your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper