[Dr. Zafar Ahmed, zai-alpha@hotmail.com, 18-12-2020]
(Reading time 10 mins)
(Maybe names written here are not known to you, I guess you can still come over)
Do you notice a gender bias at work? Women are known by their first names and there seems to be no rule for men. The reason behind this is usually not very good: After the marriage their surname will change! Thankfully, we now see names like Kareena Kapoor Khan and Farah Khan Kunder. This mostly happens when a lady marries a peer/ boyfriend. Next, even this trend should go: Why should anyone has to change his/her name after marriage? I think it is the kids who may carry double surnames. Or they should carry their mother’s first name (naturally) and father’s surname (to be politically correct!)
In Nilgiri, we had one impressive tall and dark lady journalist named Sucharita Mukerjiee Khan (RIP). I learned the new trend of double surnames first from her name.
S. Kalavathi of Training School (TS) continues to be so. This could be a case of accidental degeneracy, as she married Sridhar. This couple has been running REWARD trust to arrange Education for the deprived ones. Hats off to them, we should feel self- persuaded to contribute financially to this trust which keeps shinining time and again.
In our Whats App group (27-WA), Dhanya Mangla has switched over to Dhanya Suresh. We the batch mates take the news of a get-together more seriously if it also comes from this couple. Usually, a husband retires first but Dhanya has volunteered her retirement to follow her passion for social work. In TS, there used to be a lady named Y.K. Lakshmi, now she is Lakshmi Hyderabad, a studious member of our WA. I take her comments and suggestions seriously.
In 27-WA, there was one B, who became BR, then Bruce and finally Brahaspati Rao. When we grow old we may not like to hear our petnames. Dear Bruce, please speak up in this regard, we must know. Dr. S. Rangarajan writes Dr. SR for short, confidently.
During the lockdown, for quite sometime one Roger Fan joined our WA, it turned out that he was our Chandrasekar working for BSNL Shillong, paying a tribute for some time to his favourite Roger Federer, the Tennis player. Hiding behind an assumed name is a vogue in various sites and it could really be fun for a short while in a group of one kind, like ours.
Our parents try to give us a nice maiden name, some people keep hiding this name, they may even forget it. But when they go abroad they hear this name and they start liking it. Coming back home, they like to re-introduce themselves with their first name. It becomes too late and they only get little success.
We should be thankful to AMD, DBN and PDN for expanding their first name in WA. Thankfully, Jaynamesh has switched over to Jayanthi. Suddenly, one Nandkumar emerged who informed us that his son wrote a book “Meri Shayeri Mera Samaj” then for congratulating them I had to search that he was Maliakar from Chemistry.
Recently, we were grieving in our WA when the soul-mate of Singha Roy passed away, untimely. Responding to our condolence messages he wrote an emotional post, it was then his nice name was revealed. So there are now two Sandip(s) in our batch, the other one is Nayak from Chemistry.
Thankfully, we are already putting up well with the duos of Arvind(s), Balasubramaniam (s), Chandra(s), Lakshmi(s), Naik(s), Nayak(s), Rao(s), Suresh(s), Shashikant(s) and the trio of Sharma(s): Praveen, Anil and Avaneesh. Sometimes a confusion does arise.
Once X1 of the duo-X posted something in the group, not liking it , Y called up X1 for a warning, X1 pleaded innocence and the blame was shifted to X2. Thankfully, the matter ended as X2 and Y were not great friends.
There is one Vijay besides Vijayalakshmi in our group, I guess that he is our Vijay Tukaramji NIMJE from Physics. A. S. Joshi (Phys, ex-RRCAT Indore) is actually Annand-verdhan Shivaram Joshi. R.S. Chuabey (Phys, RRCAT) is Radhey Shyam Chaubey. V in our Gold-man’s name is Vimalchand. The P is Prabhakar who is the author of the book “Risk-based Engg.”
We have five Ravi(s) (meaning wise we may add Bahnu and Bhaskar also) and we deal with them well without any confusion. However, it was nice and apt when Ravi Aladi told himself to be another Ravikumar on the birthday of G. Ravikumar.
Kamaruddin has been added but where is Jalaludduin? The singer G. Srinivasrao is being searched but what about T. Srinivas? Some of the duo(s) mentioned above can become trio(s) , if we can find Chandramouli, Suresh N. (Chem.) and one more Lakshmi (speccy & short built) – any news?
Manisha left early to join ND-TV, it seems she is in Pune. She once joined our get together in TSH, Paramita may add her here. Trupti (Joshi) resides in Hiranandani Thane. Once she joined us in the wedding of Anita’s daughter, Preeti Pal may add her. One may find / add Adhikari, Sahoo, Pande, Kush, Kher, Kaushik, Kadam and Monojit!
Let us now recall those of us who are no more now: Raghuvendra Udupi, Abbhjit Chatterjee, Pradeep K. Garg, Captian Ponnar, Krishna Kumar, Subhasis Majumdar and Hema Sankaran. May their souls rest in peace and their families succeed well.
I would be sorry for any spelling or some other mistake in any name here, because these names are not coming from any list. I may be corrected. You know our list is pretty long, according to Tripathi, we were 183+.
Nicknames are apt but they need to be less offensive. The name of one girl was Chapal, it was distorted to Chappal! You can imagine the fun the guys had inside the classroom and around. One Komal Gandhi was called KG and then “Kilo” ! Genrerally, one should look up while walking (unlike me), one girl who looked up a little more was called “Akashwani” ! One boy who used to lean a bit was called Tan(theta) ! I heard that I was called “Dr. Interesting” in HRDD because while teaching I used to find/call everything interesting! Some students also called me “what happens.” The new born(s) of a couple used to die prematurely, lastly they nicknamed their kid JIO ! Maybe Ambani(s) took it from them. One girl in TSH, who hailed from Deonar, often took the BEST bus from the hostel stop, she was called “371”! One of our teachers was growing a beard when I acknowledged it, he smiled and said: Yes, now changed I want to become a “bearded genius”! We started calling him so (that)
Nowadays, Pratham, Prameya, Siddhant and Pramana are names ! I suggest three more: Phalan (function), Avkalan (differentiation) and Samakalan (Integration) as prospective names. A senior and famous Physicist Carl Bender visited us. Over dinner we asked him about his family. He had two sons. He said “ It turns out that we may have taught Differentiation to the first one and Integration to the other.” He looked anguished and I was perplexed. He then explained to me that the first one separated off and the other one lived with them.
These days SBI seems to have almost changed its name to an omnipresent acronym YONO, do you know its full: you only need one. After struggling to know it I am even more puzzled as to what they mean? I only know that earlier, their fancy idea of “Single Window” hardly worked.
One L.M. Pant went to CERN to work with Dr. Archana Sharma (my classmate in M.Sc. Phys. in BHU). She called him Lalit, he thought he being junior to her, she called him so, also he liked it. He then realised that there, he was generally called by this name only.
When Pant came back, our I-cards were getting renewed in BARC. I went to CC to collect mine. Reaching there I found that Pant was arguing as to why they did not expand his name to Lalit Mohan Pant despite him filling it like that in the format of the form. Pant cited my example to them. To my surprise, seeing/ hearing me there, the clerk was excited and addressed two lady colleagues: Madam ! madam !! He is Zafar Ahmed. They looked at me and smiled. It turned out that those two ladies wanted to write Z. Ahmed/ A. Zafar in my I-card but the clerk insisted that I was Zafar Ahmed from TS till the date in the records. However, they confidently declined to expand even the L of L. M. Pant. Pant was grumbling to make a valid point: If you want to go strictly by the records, then why the hell you ask us to fill forms time and again! Disappointed Pant and I came back together.
Friends, I wrote it all for fun and friendship, after all it is your name, write it whatever way you like. Thankfully, there ain’t any National Policy of Names (NPN) in the country so far! May I suggest one: Expand Your First Name (EYFN) or even First Name First (FNF).
I WROTE A STORY 