Guests at the ear-piercing ceremony of A. Mathiveerachozhan’s two children in Checkanurani last Saturday were pleasantly surprised to see the computerisation of an old custom common almost all family gatherings in the region. After the sumptuous feast, as attendees started queuing up at the moi (gifts in cash) table, they were amused to find someone tapping into a laptop connected to a small printer instead of scribbling entries into a thick-ruled notebook, a sight to which they are accustomed.
Here, each moi contributor’s name and address was swiftly keyed in and a printed receipt handed over — it listed the details of the function, the money they had given, and a thank you note from the host.
Meticulous accounting
The idea is the brainchild of 33-year-old M. Prabhu, who decided to computerise the collection and tracking of moi for convenience. Moi , both received and paid, has to be meticulously accounted, particularly in Usilampatti and surrounding regions in Madurai, with almost every household maintaining a notebook for each ceremony organised by them. Bitter quarrels, and embarrassing relatives over a loudspeaker for not making a moi contribution, are often reported. Moreover, hosts are expected to pay back at least the same amount, if not more, as moi when they are invited to ceremonies by people who contribute to theirs.
“I have myself faced such an awkward situation since I failed to keep track of some of the relatives in the notebook maintained by my family,” said Mr. Prabhu, who runs a mobile phone shop in Checkanurani and first experimented with computerised moi account-keeping for his children’s ear-piercing ceremony two years ago. “In that, I just recorded the details of the contributors in the computer,” he says.
With his relative Mathiveerachozhan requesting a similar system when he had to host the function, Mr. Prabhu improvised by writing a simple software with the collaboration of a friend working in a software company.
Apprehensions addressed
“We could provide details of all moi contributions printed in a tabular format, along with a soft copy, soon after the function ended. The software also enables area-wise analysis of contributions,” he said.
“Some of my relatives were apprehensive that the data may not be recorded properly in a computer. However, they were happy once they received the receipt,” recalls Mr. Mathiveerachozhan.
Mr. Prabhu, who is planning to offer the service commercially, said he will soon be additionally enabling SMS acknowledgements to contributors.
Though there has been criticism that the moi tradition is a source of avoidable societal pressure, Mr. Prabhu said he viewed it as a form of social security. “A poor person can set up a small business with a few lakhs of rupees received as moi , which he need not pay back at a go,” he says. “Computerisation is my small contribution towards keeping an apparently declining tradition alive.”
