A man's worth: dowry redux

'So what are you worth?' I asked.

'Rs 50 lakhs,' he wrote back.

I tut-tutted: What was Rs 50 lakhs these days? Too late to 'improve' himself, he moaned, but he'd make sure his unborn sons grew up to deserve more respectable dowries.

It was all a joke, of course. The 'dowry calculator' was doing the rounds on Facebook and I urged a friend, a business journalist, to get himself 'valued' for