Status: The Exclusive Phone Call..

 

Status: That Exclusive Phone Call...

By

Vivek Hande

The word Status derives from the Latin word status which refers to condition/ position or state. This in turn is derived from the Latin verb stare which means to stand. Status as we understand it today, refers to social rank of a person in a group. A status symbol are the visible external things that attach to a person or workplace and serve as evidence of social rank. The word first came into existence around 1670s in a legal and social context.

Status Symbols are tied to societal changes and changing social norms and practices. They constantly evolve and what might be a status symbol today, may cease to be one, years down the line. Obviously, they serve as visible indicators of societal status, prestige and wealth. They may include luxury goods, exclusive experiences, practices, designation of rank or certain behaviours.

There have been some weird status symbols over the ages. At some point of time, certain colours and artefacts could only be used by the elite. The wealthy Victorians went through an intense Egyptomania phase where everything Egypt was flaunted as a status symbol. The highlight of exclusive dinner parties used to be the ability to purchase Egyptian Mummies and unwrap millennium old corpses gradually over the course of the evening. The evening would gradually wrap you around in a creepy awe...

Dinner Entertainment..

Chinese aristocratic women in the late 1800s/early 1900s would have their feet crippled as a status symbol. Girls from rich families would undergo foot binding and a steady breaking of toes and bones of the arch of the feet to make them look delicately lotus shaped and symmetric to enhance feminine beauty. Break your feet and flaunt your wealth and status! The procedure was mercifully, legally outlawed in 1912.

Lotus Feet: Break a Leg

When Columbus returned after his voyages to the New World, he brought back Pineapples and introduced them to Europe. The Europeans lapped up the succulent delight, but they were available at premium, and they had no clue how to grow them. Pineapples were hired for display for exclusive dinner parties and were regarded as gift worth giving if you had arrived in life.

I cannot say I am very conscious of status symbols but one has worn good watches, written with some expensive pens, driven some nice cars and felt good about them. However, in the mid-90s when I was stationed at Port Blair, Andaman & Nicobar Islands, as a Physician in the Naval Hospital, I would receive a phone call once in about four to six weeks. Nothing has ever matched the feeling of exclusivity and the high it gave me. More importantly, the phone call would make my wife feel very proud of me and I rose up a few notches in her eyes, at least transiently. It was a phone call one could not brag about, and one could only talk about it in hushed whispers. You had to be on the very special list to be on it. You obviously had to be very important and special to figure on it.  The list also had different status levels. I was quite on top of the list and it was an amazing feeling which did great for my ego. It still makes me feel good after so many years.

The Port Blair of those days was very different from today. There were few cars on the roads; two petrol pumps; four civil flights a week. I was one of the two physicians on the islands- the other being in the Government Hospital. I doubled up as a Psychiatrist, Dermatologist, often as the Paediatrician and I was the best Cardiology, Gastroenterology and Nephrology could offer.

Back to the phone call. Every month or month and a half, Madhavan would call me on my phone and whisper on the phone, “30 minutes Doctor; 3 plus 3”. I would leave everything and drive my trusted Maruti like a maniac to Aberdeen Bazaar. A designated spot and I would collect an innocuous looking packet and get home. Hand over the packet to my wife and see her eyes light up. Transient elevation by a few notches in her eyes. I do know a few others were on the ‘60; 2plus2 and some on the 90; 1plus1 list’. But there were a handful on my list on the entire island. I had treated Madhavan and his family a few months ago for Malaria and a particularly recalcitrant respiratory infection and that is what got me on the top of the list. 

30; 3plus3- the ultimate status symbol

Three Kilograms of Tomatoes and Three Kilograms of Potatoes within half an hour of being offloaded from the ships which came in from Calcutta or Madras once in a month or a month and a half! It could not have got better on the islands during those days when there was no fresh produce; very infrequent flights and limited commercial ship movement! Being on the 90;3plus3 was indeed the ultimate status symbol. Nothing else has truly matched that feeling of ultimate exclusivity and being right there!! Status, they say is a way to say who you are without having to spell it out...