Namesake!

Have you ever felt the need to have a different name in place of your given name? May be you are different. But during my childhood, suddenly I developed an urge to change my name!

One day, I went to a Tamil movie, along with my siblings.
The movie was euphemistically named'Vietnam Veedu' to signify a family having endless skirmishes. That was perhaps taken during the time of Vietnam war. The daughter of the protagonist would fall in love with a fellow student by name 'Ramani'. She will surreptitiously make phone call(those days telephones are kept in pedestal!)to him. When father passes by, she will switch over to loud conversation addressing the person as her girl colleague, using Tamil phrases in feminine gender, like 'podi Ramani.. vaadi Ramani...!

Back from the movie, my brothers started taunting me by frequently calling out.. 'vaadi Ramani... podi Ramani'! Now I began to hate my name and blame my parents for that as to why they kept such a ridiculous name!

My mother would pacify me saying that the name denotes beauty and suitable for both boy and girl but particularly more suitable for boys! She would also elaborate as to how much thought was given in choosing the name for me!

Most of my class mates and colleagues would call me subu! Some call me P.S, using my initials. My mother would get annoyed whenever someone calls me'subu', although I started liking the substitute name 'subu'!

But the fact remains, even the name 'subu' is an acronym for Subulakshmi!

I tend to get carried away by some names until I find that name also used in both genders.. like the name 'Prassanna', after the famous cricketer, until one day I heard someone calling out the name, Prassanna, when a nice looking girl responded!

Of course, names should not be obnoxious or ridiculous that the person bearing the name would hesitate to get himself introduced.

One day I met a colleague accompanying a foreigner. I got myself introduced to him and in return, he murmured his name to me. Confused, when I asked him again, he repeated his name as,'Titman'. After hearing the name, I realised why he murmured!

There is a custom in South in that, if repeatedly miscarriages happen, the family would keep some funny or obnoxious sounding name so that the child would survive to live longer.

Once somebody gave me a compliment, 'Sir, you look like Arnold Schwarzenegger!' Not knowing the greatness of that name, it sounded to me something like 'Arnackayar', which in Tamil denotes a string tied to waist!

Care and due diligence is required while choosing names for our children. For the younger daughter, we poured over various books on baby names and engaged in discussions well before, so that we could get the birth certificate mentioning the name. This we did because, we had to struggle to get a revised birth certificate for elder one, as the original we obtained, at the time of birth, was without mentioning name.

All said and done, both my children are found using fancy names for their email ids and user names!

Therefore, dear readers, think a lot and take care for NAMESAKE!