It is human nature to associate with fame

One morning I overheard my wife conversing with our maid-servant. My wife enquired about the week-long leave that the maid had taken without prior notice. Renuka, the maid, confessed that her folks were looking for a matrimonial alliance. My wife continued on the subject enquiring how the hunt was faring, to which the maid said: “Yes, it’s done because of you”. I was perplexed and hoped my wife was too, so that she’d investigate further. Renuka went on: “Prospective grooms are more curious about the homes that we work at rather than us prospective brides. So, matrimonial alliances among us maids are fixed based on our employers’ qualities instead of ours.”

My wife wanted to know more and Renuka obliged her with some of the questions that prospective grooms usually asked. Questions regarding number of homes one worked at, details about each client — income, ownership of the house, number of children the client had, what the children did — which college/school, employed/unemployed, car/s owned by the client, the model of the car. I couldn’t take this anymore; it seemed more like questions that a market analyst or a census official asked. Since Renuka had satisfactorily answered all the questions of the prospective groom, and probably because he also liked what he had heard about my own socio-economic status, he had agreed to marry her. We were amused and oddly concerned to learn this fact.

The soul of Sherlock Holmes had taken refuge in my wife. The unabated curiosity pushed her to ask about the groom’s employment and background. Renuka, by now was enjoying all this and proudly replied, “He works in Puravankara”. Only on being interrogated further, did we learn that he was a construction labourer at one of the construction projects taken up by the company. By now, my interest in their conversation was waning but had started off another thread on the same subject.

On another occasion, when I was recruiting candidates for the post of female guards, one of the candidates had mentioned her marital status as ‘married’. To complete the background checks, I enquired as to what her husband was doing, to which she replied: “Sir, my husband works as an IBM-employed software-engineer’s driver”. It was amusing to note that IBM was mentioned first, software engineer next and the actual employment of the person in question last. For an untrained brain in such matters, one would go through several phases of realisations before the true facts emerged.

But it’s just human nature to derive status and recognition by attaching themselves with something glamorous or recognised. People from all walks of life speak thus, and it’s not limited to the labour class. People tend to arrange words in a way that communicates not just the information asked, but also what they think of it and what they’d like the perception to be. The perception often times is linked to a higher-than-is status and wealth. People speculate that correlation came from evolution in order to survive.