Just how people choose their email ids is fascinating to observe. A number of them begin with their age or year of birth in the mail id – such as something like i-promise-i-am-not-a-moron_37@yahoo.com or shutterbug1985@bigshitnochief.com . Soon, this makes people self conscious. Every time they send a mail they worry if the truth will hurt them. “Will it get around that I am 37?” They then send out a mail to all those who have still kept in touch with them, despite their advancing years. The mail reads like this: “Please direct all communication (irrelevant spam, gossip, corny jokes, puzzles that add upto purple and the rest) to moron_halifax_texas@yahoo.com, a courageous attempt to get others to believe that the place they live in is a pleasing qualification to have on a CV. Sometime later, of course, when the downturn hits, they move to Hyderabad or Bangalore, necessitating yet another mail notifying change of identity. Why, you ask? Well, they do not wish to appear to be false, of course. When you live in Harohalli, you cannot have a Halifax mail id. The problem is that you cannot have a Harohalli, after the underscore, in your mail id as well. Its just not cool and the Yanks might think that you ain’t a comeback kid no more. This apparently complex problem is now solved: people simply appropriate the Harohalli onto their surname. So a Vinayak Harihar Rao in school (‘yuck’ to all the boys who knew him well, ‘Vinayak’ to his parents, ‘Rao’ to the PT Master, ‘Nose-digger’ to the girl sitting on the first bench), would morph into a US-returned Hari Harohalli, with an email id such as hari.harohalli@i-still-promise-i-am-not-a-moron.com . The full stop in mail ids is very powerful, much better than the underscore, more definitive than a dash. You will be amazed at just how many of India’s villages have thus entered mail ids. The defensive e-mailer always argues, with a weak smile, that the 'harohalli' is the result of the US Immigration Surname law - an argument that is now as old as the hills and rather strained.

This evolution of the email sapien carries considerable baggage. I have had, for a while now, a spreadsheet that I do not update every week, often sending mails to the original mail id. Now, I also know that these fellows checks their original mail ids at least once a week, so no doubt their year of birth or past age is still a matter of public knowledge. Perhaps, some academic type should write a paper on this matter.