And you do exactly what, sir?

According to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, in June this year, 9.2 per cent of Indians did nothing all day, up from seven per cent a month earlier. Illustration by C Y Gopinath using Midjourney

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 ladder.

The interrogation will start with a query about what I am called. What is your good name?

With a surname like Bhatt, Sharma or Mukherjee, I'd be quickly slotted as a Brahmin. Respekt.

If I were, improbably, a Pasupati, Kothapalli, Singh or similar, I'd be tagged as Kshatriya. Fighter, not to be messed with.

Names like Agarwal and Khandelwal would out me as a Vaishya. Money. Trader man.

If I confessed to having some other surname, I'd be put in the Shudra box. Daily-wage labourer.

Depending on whether I wanted to enlighten or confuse, I give my name either as Gopi or unfurl the full, formidable Chitoor Yegnanarayan Gopinath.

Once past this hurdle, and following a polite delay, he will pop out the second question.

You are from where?

There's 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 where.

Most young Indians with cross-cultural parents would probably overload, heat up and short-circuit 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 Telangana.

The third question is the killer: You do what, sir?

Your 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 else.

The Tamilian men of my childhood routinely referred to each other by their employing corporations. Thus: Wimco Venkataraman, Philips Ramamurthy, Telco Srinivasan,
Voltas Mahadevan.

Doctor, accountant, bricklayer, migrant worker, bai, MBA, Vice President, MLA, freedom fighter - 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 body.

But are you really that simple?

It has a name: workism. Some say it's 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 department.

How would you answer that tricky third question if you actually do nothing all day? What if you were jobless?

That's a growing number in India, you and I know that. According to the Centre for Monitoring Indian Economy, in June this year, 9.2 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 18.5 per cent, up from 15.1 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 41.4 per cent from 39.9 per cent.

The truth will not set you free here. So you do what we all learn to do - you fudge. You say I'm a consultant, subtly conveying that you are an expert in something. Or I'm taking a sabbatical, which makes you sound scholarly. I'm into crypto, you say, implying that you rake in moolah while sitting on your suburban bottom and doing complex maths.

If you look young and can pull it off, try your luck with I'm an influencer or I'm a disruptor (slyly hinting that you run a world-changing Elon-Musk-funded start-up).
If woman, you could doom yourself with I'm a housewife or I freelance, but don't. Go instead for I'm a post-natal caregiver or - God bless COVID-19 - I WFH these days.

The clever thing, of course, is not to fall into the workism trap at all. On days with an r, I say I'm 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 hunting).

For the unemployed, footloose and desperate, look for a title that implies good looks, stunning intelligence, white teeth and a winning smile.

I recommend Director of First Impressions.

You can reach C Y Gopinath at cygopi@gmail.com

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The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper