A 91-Year-Old, Digi Yatra and Accidental Stardom

Recently, my 91-year-old uncle travelled with my mother and me to Mumbai and back by flight. My mother and I glided through check-in using the Digi Yatra app. My uncle, however, was gently but decisively diverted to the regular counter, not because of age, eyesight, or unfamiliarity with technology (he would take grave personal offence at such an assumption, he is remarkably tech-savvy), but because his Aadhaar carried only an initial instead of his fully expanded first name. Digi Yatra, it seems, has no tolerance for single-letter citizens.

This exclusion disturbed him far more than the inconvenience of standing in a queue. Waiting patiently he can do. Being digitally rejected is another matter altogether. He went into full investigation mode, the kind Bangalore retirees reserve for BESCOM bills and property tax notices, and soon discovered that if his Aadhaar name matched his PAN, the correction could be made.

Fortunately, he still possessed his original PAN card, the ancient laminated artefact, probably eligible for a museum display somewhere near Cubbon Park, in which his initial was proudly expanded exactly as he wanted. Unfortunately, the newer blue PAN card had quietly amputated the expansion and reduced him back to a single alphabet, like a minimalist rebranding exercise he had never consented to.

Undeterred, he marched into Bangalore One and applied for a fresh PAN, enclosing a copy of the old PAN card as evidence. The application was promptly rejected because his father’s name contained a scandalous spelling error: a ‘j’ instead of an ‘i’. After several rounds of explanation, clarification, head shaking, and bureaucratic yoga across the counter, he finally surrendered and applied using the wrong spelling. After all, the mission was not to reform his father’s identity but to rescue his own.

The new PAN card arrived.

His name? Still reduced to an initial.

Bureaucracy: 1. Persistence: 0.

Even the autocorrect on his phone showed more imagination.

He returned to Bangalore One to ask why a perfectly respectable expanded name, clearly visible on the document he had submitted, had once again vanished into thin air. He was calmly informed that the system simply fetched his latest PAN data, which already carried the abbreviated version. In other words, the system was faithfully reproducing its own mistake with admirable discipline.

When he asked how this merry-go-round could ever be stopped, he was advised to produce a passport. At 91.  He does not have a passport.  He does, however, have senior citizen discounts, old telephone bills, ration cards, and memories of when Brigade Road had two shops and three cows,  apparently none of which qualify as valid proof of existence.

So he and my sister walked out, crestfallen, defeated by the mighty Algorithm and Bangalore’s air-conditioned efficiency. As they stood near the entrance, mentally calculating how many lifetimes it might take to fix one name, a local tout approached them, attracted by the unmistakable body language of people who had just lost a small war.

On hearing the story, the man asked, genuinely puzzled, why a 91-year-old gentleman was running from office to office trying to change his name at this stage of life.  In a moment of exhaustion, desperation, and misplaced honesty, my sister blurted out, “He can’t use Digi Yatra when he flies.”  

The tout froze. Digi what? He had never heard of Digi Yatra. But sensing a potentially exotic business opportunity, possibly involving airports, technology, and extremely senior frequent flyers, his eyes lit up. He asked them to contact him later, clearly preparing to become Bangalore’s first authorised Digi Yatra consultant by evening tea time.

When my uncle narrated this saga to me later, he concluded with quiet triumph:  “At least I managed to fool one fellow into believing that I’m an extremely busy man who flies all the time, all thanks to Digi Yatra.”

At 91, he may not have conquered Aadhaar, PAN, or the sacred databases of the Republic.  But he has successfully upgraded his street reputation to that of a high-flying executive with unresolved digital privileges, not bad for a man who still remembers buying his first radio. 

The moral of the story: algorithms are unforgiving, paperwork is immortal, and reputations can be accidentally upgraded. All it takes is one stubborn initial and one very confused tout.  At 91, he didn’t get Digi Yatra, but he did get a new identity as a globe-trotting executive. That’s a decent upgrade for one missing initial.

Stories, not instructions. Experiences, not advice—medical or otherwise. Data, only what the internet quietly gathers anyway. Proceed with equal parts curiosity and common sense.