What’s in a name? Or multiple names?

“Madhav!” I called and my mom responded. I realized something was wrong when my friends stared at me, aghast. My eyes widened as I realized what they had assumed and I burst out laughing. I was not calling my mom by her name, I explained. It so happened that one of her favourite actors is Madhabi Mukherjee and so, in my teenage years, I got into the habit of teasingly calling her by that name. Yup, the full name. Over time, I didn’t even realize when it shortened to Madhav. But my mom is not the only recipient of a new name from me, there are many others and there’s a history behind why names fascinate me.

It was the first week of college when someone asked me my name. I blanked out. No, I don’t have amnesia. :D My brain just scrambled. Till then, I'd had one name that I was called at home and by neighbours while I had another name for school. So, when my brain was put in a setting that didn’t fit in either of this categories, it couldn’t compute.

I’ve heard of friends having pet names and nicknames but I’ve yet to come across someone who has four names like I do—three legit names and one cutesy (translation: embarrassing) pet name, courtesy parents. I attribute it to a confused family. It seems I was given one name during my naming ceremony but my mom was not too happy with it so she started calling me by another name (not a pet name) and then they changed their minds when I was to receive my ‘official’ name on my birth certificate, which is how I’m Rajani (usually mispronounced as Ruhjaani, also a Sindhi surname :P). But for the longest time I struggled between the name at home with which I felt more comfortable and my official name which felt formal to me. The one from the naming ceremony is long gone with the wind.

I had to actively work to make myself like the name Rajani. Why? Because there was a show called ‘Rajani’ when I was really young and playmates thought it was a grand idea to sing the theme song, ‘Rajani, Rajani, Rajani’ around me. Then there would be some who would call me Rajnikant (a few friends also found Rajnican’t hilarious) and I am not a fan of the actor (the horrror!) Except, once, when I memorably and successfully copied his fight move *smirk* on Sappu, my sister, when we were squabbling. If that’s not enough, a doctor would playfully call me ‘Rajaniganda’. In this case ‘ganda’ meant dirty, instead of what the name actually stood for ‘Rajanigandha’ a sweet-smelling night-flower. Trauma, I tell you!

This continued till someone in the family casually said that my name was a combination of the names from my family. ‘Ra’ from Ramakrishnan my dad, ‘Ja’ from Jayashree my older sister and ‘Ni’ from Sukesini my mom. I was just glad that Swapna my other sister was born after me! I might have been Swarajani, whatever that means or some other combination! I was also really kicked when a former colleague, Noel Fernandes, pointed out that my surname has ‘India’ in it. So, I’d go around telling people ‘Th’ India ‘Th’ when I needed to spell it out, only for them to get flummoxed and write it exactly that way, wondering if I were some new kind of patriot! :P

And then, when I joined Tinkle, Uncle Pai (Anant Pai, the founder-editor) and I would always be the first two people to enter office. On some mornings, he took particular delight in greeting me with, 'Good Morning, Good Night'. Because ‘Rajani’ means ‘night’. So that is a fun memory.

So the moral of the story is: my family is to blame for my tendency of bestowing names on people. I often try out new names on colleagues because like I explain to them, it is too much to expect someone to go through their whole life with only one name! Mind you, bestowing a new name is a long process because the name has to be whimsical, suit the person and they need to be okay with the different versions I try on them or yeah… just give in to my suggestions, either works!

Apart from my mom who became Madhav, Jaya (my sister) ended up with Jhumri Telaiya (I just discovered that’s a city in Jharkhand but I picked it up from Hindi movies), Kajrare Baadal (kohl-like clouds) and more recently Joy to the World, shortened to Joy... sometimes. :P Yup, convoluted, grand names are more fun because… ‘mouth exercise’. Then colleagues and friends started receiving my bounty. Some names I just shortened while some got entire new names.

Abhijeet (Kini) got named PariMan (AngelMan), briefly, because anytime I was lost (my sense of direction is legendary) he came to my rescue like a guardian angel. All I had to do was call him and all he had to do was refer to landmarks that were restaurants (foodie, that is me) wherever I was. Over time, Dolly became Dolce (possibly because she makes fun of most brands, she says no, so then it's just something that came to :P), Shruti became Bugs (she had that same cheeky grin as Bugs Bunny), Aishwary became Ashwinder (maybe simply because he towered over me :P), Sean D'mello I sometimes laughingly called D'mellodramatic (for obvious reasons :D) Sean (Sequeira) became Bodhi short for Bodhisattva (he’s kinda zen), Vineet became Vinito Infinito (he has this cool white streak in his hair plus he's a comics illustrator), Ritu turned into Luka short for Romelu Lukaku (yup, the footballer and what a wonderful name!), Mahzbeen became Doda (from Doddabetta the mountain and Doda’s Dubukka, an old story in Tinkle) while Aparna turned into Aps (short for Apsaloosa… I was kinda thinking of Appaloosas) and Devika into the mysterious 'D' (that's the shortest so far). 

Savio is sometimes Salvadore (since he likes to pretend that he has his roots in Portugal, complete with the Mascarenhas family crest :P) and another friend Akshay became Tripathiji (for no good reason and yes, the ‘ji’ suffix is essential. Respect!). Ritika laughingly accepted Toxica after she was mean to me, once, and since she was being so accommodating, I gleefully featured her as the villain Toxica in the Shikari Shambu series. :D Yes, the one with a rubber duck, called the Bombay Duck, on her shoulder (Psst! That one's based on a hilarious incident where Ritika (who's from Kolkata) ordered Bombay Duck only to find it is a fish! :P :D).

My favourite person to experiment on is my niece, Aisha, and she’s the only one who actively collaborates in coming up with new names (though she tends to discard the names later which is just not right!). She’s Swara Strawberry Nair (she was nearly named Swara which means a musical note and she loved strawberries at the time), Shizuka Nair (her favourite Doraemon strikes!) and my favourite Jusht-a-Mountain Nair (she was all of 3 and relating a story with great seriousness). A recent addition is I'm Bored Nair (that's been her mantra since she could speak!).

Funnily however, when I have to name characters in the books I write, they are usually monosyllabic or at least as short as I can make them. And that I attribute to my phenomenal memory or the lack thereof! :D

Jusht-a-Mountain Nair aka Aisha

Madhav aka my Madhabi Mukherjee