Know Your Age via KYC

The Man from Madras Musings is certain that some of you may sometimes wonder as to what MMM is doing when he is not writing this column. Thinking beautiful thoughts? Being kind to animals? Sniffing at flowers? None of the above is the answer. He is spending all his time, in case you want to know, in getting banks, electricity boards, gas agencies and just about anyone else to know him better., he is forever in an ocean of KYC forms. Filling them once is bad enough but after a few years these things lapse and then you need to do them again. KYC is apparently Know Your Customer but MMM prefers Kill Your Customer.

The Reluctant KYC Form Filler

For long MMM pretended these did not exist and hoped that if they were ignored long enough, they would go away. But that did not happen. In fact, they tightened their grip on MMM by stonewalling on payments and permissions until MMM had to say please. And fill those damned KYC forms.

In this MMM envies his good lady, also known as She Who Must Be Obeyed, who is invariably ahead of the KYCs themselves. She has them know her long before they need to know, and that seems to be the trick.

The Forgotten Gas KYC

There was one KYC that MMM absolutely refused to have anything to do with, and that was the one at the gas agency. It was news to MMM that he had a gas connection in his name. He had all along assumed someone else had it in the house.

It turned out that MMM too had one, this being no doubt the handiwork of MMM’s late lamented father, who believed that life was incomplete until everyone had a ration card and then, a gas connection. He was a product of those scarcity days.

A Gentle Push from Home

To get back to the topic under discussion, the call for KYC kept getting louder and louder. And MMM ignored it. Until one day when She Who Must Be Obeyed strode into MMM’s study and rolled her eyes. It turned out that the proprietrix of the gas agency and MMM’s good lady were great friends. Over tea and buns, the former had remarked that it was indeed a pity that MMM’s household was going to lose a gas connection owing to lack of KYC.

The wretched man was fully conscious of his position, as the grammar books used to say. But MMM’s good lady, under the tough exterior, has a kind heart. All had been arranged, she said.

A minion had been despatched to do the preliminary groundwork and all MMM had to do was go, present himself, do the registration formalities and come back. MMM did try to protest feebly but was firmly shushed. The kitchen, declared his good lady, needed gas — unless MMM was adept at flintstones.

KYC Process

And so off MMM went. Past experience had shown him that these things are never accomplished in one visit. But this proved an exception. MMM was welcomed, no doubt owing to the above-mentioned friendship between his good lady and the proprietrix. He was offered a seat and, having taken it, MMM presented his thumbs, so that they could be read. He was taken aback at being rather curtly told to take off his glasses. He did so obediently, and a cell phone, camera to the front, was flashed before his face. He was then told he could go. MMM made bold to ask as to what had happened to the fingerprint reader.

He was told that was for younger people and for the elderly like MMM, it was the iris that had to be registered.

MMM Comes of Age

MMM came home with mixed feelings. It is never nice to be classified as elderly, and it rather destroyed the image MMM had of himself as a young man on the threshold of life.

Secondly, he now lives in dread about how many more agencies will classify him as elderly and ask him to KYI (Know Your Iris).

This article appeared in Madras Musings- https://madrasmusings.com/vol-35-no-9/short-n-snappy-228/

My book, Chennai, A Biography can be ordered– https://sriramv.com/2021/12/27/how-to-buy-autographed-copies-of-chennai-a-biography-from-outstation/