Tuesday, May 08, 2007

Globalised Names

Much before Indian economy became globalised and Indian women started wearing hipsters, Indian parents in order to make their children more competitive and hip and cool have been giving "global" names to their children. So in Punjab you had Tony, Vicky, Lucky and Bobby, In Kerala you had a Dolly Nair and in rest of India you had anything in between.
Bengalis have been very serious about names and for at least the last 70 years preferred secular names. My late father had the fancy and short name of Subrata, he was born in early 1930s. I think Bengalis did away with mythic and religious names long time back and became serious about names. A case in the point is the full version of my own name:) It is little wonder therefore, in globalised names too, Bengalis have been thought leaders. I knew someone in Calcutta who was named Monami Mitra [From the french mon ami] In the Calcutta of 1960s you could find many a woman named Lucy [not to be confused with the bengali Luchi]; and a class mate of mine was called Happy Ghosh. I do not think any other region can beat that.
My pride in Bengali names lasted for nearly as long as I have lived and increased until last week. It happened on a Saturday when I was working alone in my office with the front door of the office open and unattended. On hearing footsteps and rightly suspecting that it might be a bunch of salespersons I got up to get out my room and to confront them. I am usually very poilte but firm with such pushy salespersons but that day I was in a foul mood and decided to be very rude and nasty. In fact when I left my chair I was already gnashing my teeth. By the time I entered reached the door of my room to get into the hall from where the footsteps were coming, two young salespersons were alredy pushing open my cabin door. At which my determination to get rude became even firmer.
Finally, I managed to open the door first and before I could open my mouth, a young man, very fair and with locks that must have killed a hundred girls spoke up " Sir I am from Hutch and my name is Romeo Khan". I do not know what happened to me, suddenly instead of shouting at the guy and being rude I burst out into incessant peels of laughter.... The only thing I remembered while laughing was why didn't the guys parents name him Majnu Khan, why Romeo? By the time I had finished laughing Romeo Khan and his female colleague had left my office. Probably taking me to be insane. While I resumed work after that hysterical bout of laughter, I remembered you can not be more rude to a person than laughing at his name.
I also realised sadly that the best global names in India did not come out of Bengali households anymore.....
Jai Bharat