Thinktankers facilitated by amblingindian

Calling the great Indian thinktankers, facilitated by Amblingindian

Amblingindian is proud to host the think tankers series, and all are invited to join, details as below:

We urgently require public interaction and consultation, with task forces set out to define the new order of society and the rule of law as well. Below topics are of special interest and common citizens, self- appointed champions, representatives, officials as well as thinkers are invited. Think tankers will be created in all cities and special reports will be submitted to the government  with recommendations courtesy the Amblingindian. If the think tankers overflow with ideas they will be used in lieu of water tankers, to tide over the looming summer water crisis.

Following are the initial thoughts and inputs received by the amblingindian. Request all the think tankers to come up with rules, hierarchy and detailed solutions to some of the pressing issues faced by our country, as below:

1.Movies – all banned subjects to be defined. This includes religion, caste, creed, age, all occupations, animals, history, and mythology. Movie makers can figure out what’s left over or cover other stuff like  whatever is  gender /language/ religion/everything else neutral or plants. 

2. Marriages – all marriages to be categorized as honourable/ dishonourable before solemnisation . Termination and dictat rules to be defined for non-same-caste, non same-state, non same religion marriages. Khap panchayats to be granted special status for solemnisation of anything and everything even remotely resembling a union.

3.Rights – 
Right to free speech - need to have a ban on all words other than blah- blah in public ( no bleating as sheep may object) 
Right to dignity -need to apply to all with the exception of  women in patriarchal society     
Right to work – need to have the right, however there may not be work to do     
Right to controversy – need to have the right to create controversies for nothing
Right to hunger – need to have a right to be hungry
Right to coaching classes  – no need for education, we need the right to attend coaching classes on all subjects from cradle to grave    
 Right to equality- need the right to equal 2+2 and come up with any answer    
 Right to opinion – need to have the right to keep opinions to oneself    
 Right to jail – Need to have the right to be behind bars for any word uttered or written about (please exclude the Amblingindian though..)    

4. Other interesting topics will be added in due course, such as codes of conduct for common( mango) people . This may include  
Right to shop at Tesco’s, Ikeas etc.
Right to form pop groups (strictly not allowed for women)
Right to make junk calls (as against the right to privacy)
Right to issue dictats against any person living in India or outside of it, demanding their life
Right to evict people from pubs, bars, discos ( appears to be against the Indian culture)
Right to redefine the code of conduct itself as and when one wishes to

Pl send your responses to thinktankers@amblingindian.com by the end of the century.
Regards
Aina Rao( The Amblingindian)

Salute the bell peppers

Prologue  :

Everything you read or write about nowadays could suddenly become the subject of endless controversies, with authors being evicted from literary fests and the targets of unwanted FIRs, so i decided to stay clear of all this, at least for a while and write about something totally non- controversial , like the bell peppers, commonly known as the capsicums.
and why not ?fruits and veggies( F&Vs) have enough qualities and virtues to elaborate on and extoll, like their delectable tastes & riotous colours. Even then I find their  humility and stoicism to be the most noteworthy. Though the humble beans may have been the subject of gazillions of offensive remarks about their offensive, odorous capabilities ( by ungrateful creatures who fry them anyway, day after day ), have we ever seen a bean take offense to this ? Me thinks , the humble F&Vs seem to be the only subjects who don't  have activitists or loud supporters , and wont take matters in the wrong spirit, hence  are the only things one can write about , to be   pretty safe..

We humans , who will oneday end just like the beans, bell peppers and F&Vs , have a lot to learn from these creatures, so bereft of ego, so ready to serve., and therefore, here goes a humble salute..

Salute to bell peppers 

I once met some interesting  characters called the bell peppers. They looked so crunchy and sunny, brightening up the vendors' cart with their yellow and red hues, that i instantly fell in love with them. and asked the veggie vendor to give me four .
I brought them home, washed and froze them, hoping that they were not too cold that night. Little did they know that they would be readied the next morning for the pan and wok treatment, to be fried , in a spicy, burning mishmash of gravy and  sauces , ending up in a curry, inching their way into the guts of many, and finally fading into oblivion, together with bacteria , fungi and others to further nourish mother earth. For such a sweet, short and meaningful existence, i salute the bell peppers.

Regards ,
Aina Rao
copyright @Aina Rao 2013. All rights reserved.

Happy Birthday, Mr AAM ( Mango)

What's in a name ..?

Is it possible to find a single soul in this world who is completely in awe of his own name ? Find me one, my hats off to him.. most people will claim they don't know how or why they got the name, 'Ask my parents' is the most repeated response.. Its not strange, considering most names, even simple ones can be construed as something totally different when translated into some strange language like Swahili, for instance , so , what should the poor parents do? Name the kid a number 45678, just to be completely safe ? Or sit with a dictionary and translate each name into 100 other tongues to be sure , don't think the parents of Hardik* or any of the HAroons* ever did that , did they?

And so the name saga continues.. Even the folks with seemingly innocuous names dont seem to be too happy about them .Ask one Mr Alok Agarwal*( who happens to become Alex,Agro, Alag or Alu courtesy rechristening at various points in time, by hapless individuals struggling to twist their tongues around his common name ), for when some people could really read his name fully and correctly, as at the immigration points, was greeted with a stern warning” Doubtful case, do not proceed” . So considering that there are at least a 1000 Alok Agarwals in this part of the world alone, the perils of too common a name begin to surface too soon.Not to forget the many Osamas* habiting the other worlds. What can the poor chappies do , now that they are stuck with a combination that seemed innocent then, but is now proving to be so deadly that it is greeted with the greatest of trepidation?

Maybe they could change a couple of things, like the spelling somewhat. The clever newspaper ads are doing this all the time , I regularly see ( and actually read , yes , I do, not surprising considering i hope to get a PHd on names and naming practices ) notices on the lines of “I” “Mrs Krishna” am now to be called “Mrs Krishnaa”. Yes,we got the “a”dditional point, but it may not help much if other vile Krishnaas did the same ..

Other possibilities spring to mind. How about adding a Kumar, to make an “Alok kumar Agarwal'AKA “AKA”. Again that may not exactly work, as there may be a sizeable number of such AKAs floating around, much more than desired. An inclusion of : Junior /Senior' is possible, but again , it may seem too exotic to find an “ Alok junior Agarwal” , and hence impossible to ignore, and may therefore elicit unwanted questions about lineage etc. Who wants to open those Pandoras boxes now ...

So , finally one last try, why not borrow a leaf from the female books and add a double- barrell to the name , both for effect and exclusivity. Since the probability of finding an “Alok Agarwal- Mohanrao” may be close to one in a zillion, it brings the advantage of sailing past all the immigration/police/customs what have you checkpoints , faster than you can say the name, tongue- in -cheek .  And if the name itself were an issue, you could always display the marriage certificate , as the female members of the species do, uncomplainingly. We are in the 21^st century, after all, and an woman is,( in theory or on paper at least) equal to a man. So by corollary, a man could be equal to the woman as well.

Happy birthday, Mr AAM**

* Names changed to protect identify
Haroon- means i lose ( hindi)
**AAM in hindi means mango also means common 

Long names, IIT days

 Long names , IIT days


“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet”. Well, yes, as long as you have a name like William, but, dear Mr Shakespeare, if you were me, I bet you a thousand roses, you wouldn’t have come up with this quote.

Let me explain. The name given to me at birth- rajeshree, later got changed due to some sort of naga dosha with naga tribes explaining how the child would  be unlucky if nag was not incorporated into the name ... had to get converted into a nagrajeshree. As if the original wasn’t complicated enough. And my sister, who was luckier in the name section, didn’t do so well otherwise as she was dunked in oil for 9 days before my dad got to see her. Whats amazing is how , my doubly educated parents, Dad, with a super Phd from MIT & Caltech and my mum, even though one of the first woman engineers in India, were the most gullible and submissive folks in the face of such strong beliefs.. Parental pressure must be! So much so that I got the cobra (nag) name and my sis, a bit luckier, got the oil treatment. (Well, she must be luckier as the oil got washed away but the name stuck to me, forever, and will do so even in my grave, unless if I do something prompt, I suppose).


And so, here I am, after a few decades of life, with a long name glued to me, much like a leech, needing a rather complicated operation to get rid off. Its not the nth time that I have thought about changing the name, as have several of my not so lucky brethren with long names I am sure. Although I have coined several nicknames (aina, anita, etc , etc.) to deal with this,  I never got round to actually changing it. Just the thought of the multiple certificates, licences, what have you and the effort needed to change all these, kind of sends me into a tizzy. Which is why I am still here with the same name.. even though I must have mulled over the thought  at least a million times. The amount of effort that’s gone into thinking about it, I could have been sailing away with not just a new name, but also a new nose, lips, face , body, and many other body parts  by now, had I put thoughts into action. But glory be to procrastinators,  being part of that category of peoples, here I am , good ol me, still with the same long name.


And thus I seriously sympathise and empathise completely with those poor souls (rich in name though) who occasionally, and also frequently come from the south of this country, and therefore have to live with the legacy of longish names.


Firstly there is the mother, grandmother, presiding deity, father, grandfather and to top it all the village name to complete the naming ceremony. So that a little girl , who happens to be my relative ( see it runs in the family) has the name of Parvati Venkata Nag Vijaya Ramya Ritupuli*, Ganapuli*. Rich little thing, she only has to call herself G.P.V.N.V.R.Ritupuli , it’s a different matter that we call her ‘ balli* ‘ anyway. And the connection? Still figuring that one out..So whats the issue - you may ask?

 It does come up  in many ways , for e.g. with a name like Adhikamasam Garudadhipati Pusharinini Triyambakeshwarulu (a sample only), the name automatically gets associated with a heavy image , the longer the heavier. Some of these names run so long that you need to be a marathoner, or you would be panting and puffing by the time you have reached the end, if your physical form is anything less than that.

Also, some mundane issues do crop up, for e.g when you need an email id, it starts getting very confusing to the poor western souls (so poor in the naming department as their names can only get longer with the additions of junior or senior or similar). Since they and therefore the systems designed by them can only think in those binary terms (first name, last name), they reach some kind of an impasse. Being an auditor,it is interesting to see findings related to names and lack of email IDs. Months sometimes pass before email Ids can be assigned to these souls by administrators sitting in the western hemisphere , since it takes them so long to decipher the strings that make up the names.


And the same issue arises while searching for such fellows on the mail  systems , since they are designed to go by  last name first and first name last and in this case, you really can’t make out what comes when. Essentially, if searching for a R.G.S.T.Amalanaka Kiruvanti, you have to scroll through many permutations before you can hit on the right one.


Not all is gloomy though. The good part is , some folks actually envy us souls. In college, and I stayed in a girls hostel called Kailash at IIT Delhi where any sort of males, except the mess staff  were not allowed in. And so there was a complex system of announcing girls names on the Public Address system so that they could come out and meet their male and therefore forbidden visitors. We had a lady Radha who (wo)manned the PA system day and night. Her job? Very simple.. stop all males or look alikes at the gate and take the names of the females they wanted to meet. Then come to the mike and shout out in a booming tone the name of the girl (not having used a mike before, she often forgot its purpose ,and sometimes even shouted to add a double impact ). So the days and nights were filled with announcements for Multiple Anitas, Lekhas, Sunitas etc, and only one Nagrajshree. Lucky me…


Sounds too simple, isn’t it ?  This led to envy on the part of some plain Vanitas, Sunitas, Kavithas  and Papayas  (sorry – meant Papiyas) , who actually thought that having a complex name like mine would be a blessing, as they wouldn’t be addressed as Sunita B- 14 or Sunita b-11 anymore. ( b- 14 and b- 11 being their room nos were appended to their plain names to  make them unique). It became a bit more complex when the room occupancy , in the last year of my IIT life, had to be doubled , so that 2 Sunitas could potentially be sharing a room. And that led to a lot of chaos, as you can imagine, on the PA system with both Sunitas of b- 14 marching to greet their welcome (male) visitors at the gate. Who said life was simple anyway?


Dear Sunita*, if you are reading this, I would still be happy to exchange my name for yours , and not just that, but our bodies too, as I have recently seen you in a swimsuit on FB and wow! 4 decades did show up few tiers in my case , but your svelte curves  took my breath away! Lets not procrastinate any more, my dear plane Sunita* friend!


A sincere plea to all my fellow countrymen, because of what I’ve been through.. Call your babies whatever you want at home (naughty baingan and tintu tuva are personal favorites), but please .. don’t saddle your little ones with such heavyweight names.


May I also recommend that new parents  borrow a leaf from the fareastern friends who seem to have no issues at all when it comes to names . All names must end in a m or an n. So simple isn’t it? I met , in quick succession, bam bam’s, pop corns’ , tim tams’, even yum yums. Being a parent, why didn’t this strike me earlier, so easy to take up the letters and just switch them around, instead of struggling with the multiple versions of gods, first letter, astrology and all that , honestly, in comparison , this method seems to be very clever  indeed.


So the next time when called  to attend a naming ceremony, I shall not go there just with a gift ( booties and the like) but a long list of names drawn up from some plain Janes, tim yums, etc  .


Parents, please dwell on this blog - I know you want your babies to gain weight now, to look cuter and cuddlier, but think about it, they won't stay cude and cuddly forever. And about 4 decades later, the added weight of a heavyweight name maybe too much to bear, along with the corpulence that the decades bring .  Maybe I can even post the names on this page next time, if it makes life easier.


Disclaimer :

*         Names changed to protect identity

All names appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real names, is purely coincidental.

IIT- Indian Institute of Technology, a graduate school in India.