Old Passports For New

RPO: Are you married?

Female applicant: Yes

RPO: Then why haven't you changed your surname?

Applicant: Is there a law that says I must do that?

RPO: No, but you should. Are you ashamed of getting married?

Applicant: Are you saying that you can't give my daughter a passport otherwise?

RPO: First change your name to your married one on your passport.

As the applicant tells it, she and the said RPO were not the only people in that grey-walled and cement coloured-wall-to-wall-carpetted room: five other pot-bellied members of the species homo sapiens, probably belonging to the Haryana genus, watched this verbal duel between a go'rment off'cer and a female member of the elite in the kind of silence where you could hear a file being shuffled.

 

Breaking the silence, the applicant threatened to call the RPO's superiors, at which point the RPO's glance fell on a section of the woman's passport which said Occupation