You're only as old as the ?woman you feel...

Some of the more amusing sorts of cases that we see in OPD are requests for changes on id documents. Mainly these are people claiming that their date of birth has been incorrectly filled in and that rather than being 54 (or even 39 in one case!), they are in actual fact 60. Conveniently the age at which the government pension starts... It's a little unclear to me what exactly the state department think we can do to confirm the ages of people who often have no birth certificates and don't even know their birthdays. Perhaps they imagine that we can cut their legs open and count the rings like a tree.
The other change that we are asked for is the sex. In 5 months I have seen about 10 cases of people whose id documents state them to be male when on examination they are clearly female, or vice versa. Those are easier to confirm.
Today's case was a highlight; a heavily pregnant lady came in most upset as the state department were refusing her maternity benefits as her id document stated that she was male. The proof quite literally was in the pudding.