Names People Play

It was bound to happen. Maybe it was destined to happen or maybe it simply happens when people happen to meet in a blog after thirty years.

What’s in a name…. the bard had said. But when you are at the receiving end of a wrong name it sure tickles and makes you smile if you are in the right mood. On the contrary you may feel the pinch, grimace, growl and grumble. It depends on whether you have had ‘that’ kinda day. You know, the kind of a day when your boss has ensured that work in the office has not been “office as usual”.

Let’s just recollect how it really took off.

I was the one who set the ball rolling. Nargis became Nigar and Alpana got a comment from me with a lot of exclamation marks since I thought she was Aashu!!!!!!!!! Then Arun, whose longest write-up is two pages, became the author of a novel simply because he had held a ‘Virgin Adultress’ before the camera. Nargis recovered from the shock quickly as Venu corrected himself, however she was down by a copy as Venu now wanted that book as a complimentary gift.

What cheek. First you get the author’s name wrong and then demand a free copy!!! Authors of the world unite. Stop giving free copies. You a have nothing to lose but a few friends and enhanced book sales to gain!! Good economics Marx, no?

As if that was not bad enough a double whammy was on the way. Intelligent Pune stepped into action by congratulating Tasneem for publishing her first book. In Philosophical Geometry (a subject just coined by me) it is known as the fourth angle of a triangle!! I think Tas was almost in a mood to accept the compliment but Nargis decided enough is enough. She put it across fair and square. It’s me, it’s moo, it’s mua who is the author, she shrieked.

But triangles or squares, Nigar’s, I mean Nargis’s misery was not yet over. Bani asked, with a tangential innocence that could also have launched a thousand ships, “there is a Nargis in the blog, now there is a book by Nargis Natrajan. I wonder if they are both the same?”

By now Nargis-whom-I-had-once-called-Nigar, was speechless- for a change. Probably she was weighing the option of launching a missile towards Mumbai or maybe she was putting on her war paint and rehearsing a war dance.

Anyways, as Nargis-and-not-Nigar was still struggling to come to terms with the schizophrenia type of a situation that was developing, brother FAB jumped into the thick of things and sorted out matters. FAB’s clarification actually reminded me of a Harry Belafonte song that Bani might well have hummed, “It was clear as mud but it covered the ground, and the confusion made my head go round.” Naresh too chipped in with FAB’s gen-next names. So there you are, name, lineage and family tree stamped and sealed with a Shakespearean flourish.

Bani therefore did what she frequently does. Take a sabbatical from the blog!!

But then I suppose one can still put all the blame on Nigar-oops-Nargis as she had actually triggered the whole drama by quizzing bloggers about the identity of the people who were in the pix. Now what do they say in the vernacular? “Aaa bail mujhe maar”. I am sure this would be the last quiz on APOSCAFRMVIMAL for quite sometime unless the inventor of this acronym and the original quiz master surfaces from Galapagos. Now wait, wait, wait WAAAAIIIT!!!!! Before five different names surface, let me put the record straight, I am talking about Stanely David and Galapagos was the name that Naresh gave to Bengaluru.

It is said, what goes round comes around.

So, when my pigeons came home to roost, things took a full circle with FAB calling me Anil. Just to refresh memories, Nigar is Nargis’s sis and Anil is my elder bro. Explanation given was plausible. He was flirting with Sonam Kapoor and probably mentally patoing Anil Kapoor so he decided to call me Anil. Situation was clearly spinning out of control. But once a trend starts it becomes difficult to stop.

Nigar-I-mean-Nargis, became a great grand mother so now we have eight new gen-next names: Asif, Armaan, Ayaan, Faraaz, Kabir, Rehaan, Sarah and Suhana (in alphabetical order). So welcome to the blog kids and add to the confusion!!!! Aloon uncle would be fine with me. Tas promptly did a faux pas with a few names and gets wrapped on her knuckles but by now we all have the excuses ready: genuine no doubt. With Vims perennially searching for new names to join the blog I am sure the fun will continue.

Ah! Mistaken identity is ok once in a while. Everyone excuses a slip of the tongue, it is the tongue in the cheek that creates problems. But then all is now phine, becoz you see by now bhee hab got uzed to it. Bhee are a phamily you see, a phamily of old nostalgic Con-went educated berhampurias who will never meet at Gopalpur on sea!!

Wait a minute, wait a minute ….picture abhi baaki hai mere dost.

There is still something new we have to get used to. What about an extra name you carry for almost twenty five years. Yes, I am talking about Udaya/Vinita. It is a good old Shakespearean dilemma with a modern twist, “To be Vinita or not to be Udaya, that’s the question.” The explanation was as unique as the problem itself. Udaya was original. Vinita is new. Udaya I never liked. Vinita I like. But since my old friends call me Udaya so Udaya too is fine I suppose. Thank you UV. It’s all very clear.

I have incidentally also cracked the Da Vinita Age Code. At fifty you manage to look twenty five because Udaya is 25 and Vinita is 25. It all adds up nicely. Well, it is fine I suppose, as long as people don’t think that Mr.Deshmukh has two wives!!

Actually calling people by a wrong name is not funny because we in India have all grown up with great expectations. Parents have instilled in us the burden of not only bade ho kar apna naam roshan karna but also khandaan ka naam bhee roshan karna. Well in this lifetime I could not roshan my name but I do try once in a while to roshanofy my khandaan name. At times I introduce myself as, “Hi, I am Arun Bhatt and I belong to the Arya Bhatt family.” In case the humour is lost on him I add, “You see my great, great, great, greatest, grandfather discovered zero and I am still stuck with it”.

Zero hua toe kya hua, Bhatt khandaan ka naam toe roshan hua na.

On a more serious note I missed the trick while naming my kids but I will definitely try to influence my grandson’s name. I will try to name him Roshan so that there is no extra pressure on the puttar to roshan his or the khandaan’s name. Fait accompli you see.

On an even more serious note, talking about Great Expectations I will never forget the immortal lines of this Charles Dickens classic. This is how the orphan, the protagonist of the novel, got a name for himself, “My father’s family name being Pirrip and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.”

Finally on a most serious note, I wonder why we get so worked up and sensitive about something soooo silly and chota sa thing as naam shaam. After all what’s in a naam shaam yaar as long as it keeps on being mis-pronounced, mis-spelt, mis-matched, mis-appropriated and mishtaken?

On this count, at least the original Nigar and Anil will be on my side.