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“My name is gps; what’s yours?”
“Jogia, sir”
“Why?”
Jogia would look at me quizzically like Alice in Wonderland.
I ask: “What does ‘Jogia’ mean?”
She would look flustered; but relieved that I didn’t launch straightaway into intricate questions on Spacetime Software in her Lab Viva.
It could be Aniket, Ayan, Ila or Ira.
Names of my Bengali students fascinated me. There is no rule that names should have contexts and meanings. But I suppose the name-giver had something at the back of his mind while inflicting it on his offspring. And, this is not always divulged unless demanded.
My Bengali friends used to ask me what the G in my name stands for. I had to admit it means ‘Horse’. And they would chuckle and ask me “Why?” I had to retort: “Why not? The horse is a noble and handsome animal (ask M. F. Hussain)”. It could be worse….many of my friends in my school Down South were stuck with Elephant, Tiger, Fox, and all possible birds and beasts save Donkey and Dog (unfair to these two creatures; we Hindus revere all created beings as our Gods or at least their vehicles).
Legend has it that one of my ancestor Pundits presided over the Aswameth Yaga (Horse Sacrifice) of the King of our Simhapuri (Lion City!) and was gifted a miniature golden horse as a memento thereof. This story is however disputed by my maternal cousins who used to say that my forefathers were uncouth stable boys of the King.
I had a lot of trouble form-filling my full expanded name which runs into 23 characters (including 2 spaces). I asked my father if it couldn’t have been simplified. He replied that he did simplify it; the full name as bestowed on poor me in my Baptism Ceremony (written with a golden ring on white rice in a silver plate) was G. V. S. V. S. K. P. Sastry (all deities on both sides of the family propitiated).
Jogia tells me that she had trouble with her surname Bandyopadhyay at Atlanta. She asked to be called just JB. Our students always knew us as ‘gps, db, sdm, hnb’ et al, because that is how they saw our names first in their Time Tables.
There was one Punjabi (Multani) student in our Physics Department at IIT Kharagpur. His name was spelled ‘Kapeeleshwar Krishana’. He owed his weird spelling to Numerology. He was at Princeton while his Degree Certificate was written up at KGP. He visited us with his parents as my guests when he came to collect his Degree two years later. He proudly exhibited his Degree to his father, who looked at it and tossed it aside saying, “This is not my son’s Degree”: it was spelled ‘Kapileswar Krishna’
(a more sensible spelling). KK had to get a corrected version paying Rs. 200, suffering a further delay of two months.
I often wondered how the 100 Kauravas of the Mahabharat were named. I could get to know all their names (and that of their lone girl sibling) when I saw a photo of chubby identical quintuplets in our Newspaper with the caption that their young mother at Etah (U. P.) had four more kids earlier, all doing fine; which led me to the following light verse (with no ill-will):
For the 96 fresh arrivals, please look up:
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_are_the_100_kauravas_names
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“My name is gps; what’s yours?”
“Jogia, sir”
“Why?”
Jogia would look at me quizzically like Alice in Wonderland.
I ask: “What does ‘Jogia’ mean?”
She would look flustered; but relieved that I didn’t launch straightaway into intricate questions on Spacetime Software in her Lab Viva.
It could be Aniket, Ayan, Ila or Ira.
Names of my Bengali students fascinated me. There is no rule that names should have contexts and meanings. But I suppose the name-giver had something at the back of his mind while inflicting it on his offspring. And, this is not always divulged unless demanded.
My Bengali friends used to ask me what the G in my name stands for. I had to admit it means ‘Horse’. And they would chuckle and ask me “Why?” I had to retort: “Why not? The horse is a noble and handsome animal (ask M. F. Hussain)”. It could be worse….many of my friends in my school Down South were stuck with Elephant, Tiger, Fox, and all possible birds and beasts save Donkey and Dog (unfair to these two creatures; we Hindus revere all created beings as our Gods or at least their vehicles).
Legend has it that one of my ancestor Pundits presided over the Aswameth Yaga (Horse Sacrifice) of the King of our Simhapuri (Lion City!) and was gifted a miniature golden horse as a memento thereof. This story is however disputed by my maternal cousins who used to say that my forefathers were uncouth stable boys of the King.
I had a lot of trouble form-filling my full expanded name which runs into 23 characters (including 2 spaces). I asked my father if it couldn’t have been simplified. He replied that he did simplify it; the full name as bestowed on poor me in my Baptism Ceremony (written with a golden ring on white rice in a silver plate) was G. V. S. V. S. K. P. Sastry (all deities on both sides of the family propitiated).
Jogia tells me that she had trouble with her surname Bandyopadhyay at Atlanta. She asked to be called just JB. Our students always knew us as ‘gps, db, sdm, hnb’ et al, because that is how they saw our names first in their Time Tables.
There was one Punjabi (Multani) student in our Physics Department at IIT Kharagpur. His name was spelled ‘Kapeeleshwar Krishana’. He owed his weird spelling to Numerology. He was at Princeton while his Degree Certificate was written up at KGP. He visited us with his parents as my guests when he came to collect his Degree two years later. He proudly exhibited his Degree to his father, who looked at it and tossed it aside saying, “This is not my son’s Degree”: it was spelled ‘Kapileswar Krishna’
(a more sensible spelling). KK had to get a corrected version paying Rs. 200, suffering a further delay of two months.
I often wondered how the 100 Kauravas of the Mahabharat were named. I could get to know all their names (and that of their lone girl sibling) when I saw a photo of chubby identical quintuplets in our Newspaper with the caption that their young mother at Etah (U. P.) had four more kids earlier, all doing fine; which led me to the following light verse (with no ill-will):
Naming Game in Etah
Naming them's easy in Etah:
Yudhistir, Arjun, Bhim et al
One is Karn of Kunti a la
The girl's name is Dussala
The rest two boy and man:
Duryodhan and Dusshasan
98 more to come.........................
Dussahan, Dussalan, and all welcome!
For the 96 fresh arrivals, please look up:
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_are_the_100_kauravas_names
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