What’s In a Name?

When a child is born in an Indian family, one of the biggest events that takes place after few days of his/her birth is Name Ceremony. (Naam Karan in Hindi) In this ceremony, a bunch of nosey relatives are invited apart from a priest with a fat pot belly, who plays one of the biggest roles then. His most useless-unquestionable job is to perform some calculation in the birth chart of a baby and comes up with a first alphabet for the child’s name. Also, there is name that is allotted to the child according to his birth chart calculations, and parents are free to assign the same name to their child. My name according to my birth chart is ‘Suruchi’ meaning good taste; I have no clue what has taste got to do with my birth. Thankfully my parents applied some brains then and decided not to take this name. For that matter of fact, my dad decided no to go with the alphabet as well that was told by the priest, and he gave me the name he had thought for me long before I was born. I am glad he did. The name ‘Suruchi’ sounds so spooky to me; I would have really drowned my self in the lake had I been asked to live with it.

To take it further, names have literal meanings as well, and many a times they are the names of Gods and Goddesses. I am sure that you must be aware that there are 6,400,000 Goddesses and Gods in Indian Mythology so, the options are vast. Whether the child is living up to his name or not, is the matter of least concern. ‘Sagar’ is one of the very common names among Indian boys. Sagar means sea or ocean. I have no idea what depth or sea or ocean people see in their one feet long boy that they name him Sagar. Or has it something to do with the colour Blue? Talking of Blue colour, we have name for that as well ‘Neel’, it means blue. You are free to draw your own conclusions.

In the book Shantaram, the guide adorns Gregory David Roberts(GDR) with a name Lin Baba. Lin literally means penis and baba is used as a token of respect against someone’s name. So when GDR introduces himself to someone saying ‘Hi! I am Lin Baba’, he literally is saying ‘Hi! I am Mr. Penis’. But it is actually a name of one of the Indian Gods, Lord Shiva.

One of the most brutally painful names from either South Indians or East Indians. South Indians take the longest names from the Gods and Goddesses and then complain endlessly that no one remembers their names. They follow a format – ‘Family name- Given name-Caste’. For example Kannoth Karunakaran Maarar, interpreted as Karunakaran of the Maarar caste from the Kannoth family or Monkombu Sambasivan Swaminathan. Swaminathan is the name of the person, Sambasivan is the name of the father and Monkombu is name of the village from where they have originated. You are left with no option other than either listening to their high pitched complains about pronouncing their names wrong or if you are polite enough you can address them with their initials.

This funny nomenclature is not confined only to India, it has strong association with celebrities as well. An article here states that a New Zealand judge ruled that a girl named “Talula Does the Hula From Hawaii” by her parents will be renamed, declaring that the bizarre name would “[Make] a fool of the child and [set] her up with a social disability and handicap, unnecessarily.” Then how about Sylvester Stallone keeping his son’s name as Sage Moonblood or Arthur naming his daughter Camera? For Celebrities and Indians, all bets are off.

Last night I received a mail from a friend with words ‘The story of 20 Toes Told in 20 Minutes’ in a subject. But there’s a lot in a name.

Fantastic Four

 

ScratchBags Four

I have not written anything ‘about me’ as yet on my blog but I think this meme would give a little insight about me.  I was tagged by 70s teen for this so, this one is for you 70s . There are other things that I wanted to add in this but since the meme is about ‘four’, I’d rather stick to it.   

 

4 Jobs I have had?
Management Trainee

Student Coordinator

Relationship Manager

Now I am an entrepreneur so, I don’t know whether that’ll be counted as a job or not.

4 Movies I could watch over and over
The Lord of the Rings

Singin’ in the Rain

The Greatest Game Ever Played

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

 

Well! I can really go on and on in this list.

4 TV shows – This is extremely tough, I barely watch TV. I am more of books and movie buff.

F.R.I.E.N.D.S

Desperate Housewives

The Amazing Race

MTV Hero Honda Roadies

 

4 places on Vacation – I have never vacationed at any place out of India but I have a dream to travel across the world, and especially Rome is my dream destination.

 

Mussoorie

Mumbai

Rishikesh

Jammu and Kashmir

4 Favourite Dishes – This one is also difficult because I am such a gourmet that there are barely dishes that I don’t like, and Mom’s cooked is welcome anytime. But the four dishes that I can have anytime are:-

 

Thin Crust Garden Pizza

Chocolate Truffle

Cold Pasta Salad

Frankies

 

Also, I am a coffee freak and I can have many glasses of lemonade during the day.

 

4 Bogs I visit everyday:-

 

Daddy Papersurfer- To master my tee hees and tsks.

Diary of 70s Teen- I am really interested in reading personal diaries.  

Electric Eggcream – This blog always intrigues me.

Drowsey Monkey - To put myself into more confusion. She is talking about some loonies toonies these days, and I have got more confused now. 

 

Frankly, there are barely 12 blogs in my Scratch Roll, so I visit all of them everyday. But, the rules are the rules and for a change I like to adhere to them.

 

I am really not tagging anyone as of now because I know a very little about my blogger friends till date and if anyone of them turns out to be anti meme, I’m dead. :-P But if anyone of you would like to do it, please go ahead. I am throwing a challenge, take it!

 

And finally, some itchy-scratchy fun. Enjoy.:)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Bootism

Would it sound bizarre if I say that I have an obsession with shoes?

I guess not. Like every other girl, I also love shoes and I think she and she also love them. I end up buying impractical shoes many a times but that’s how I am. You are free to judge me. There are barely instances when I drive past a shoe shop and don’t enter it. I may not buy (though in very rare cases such miracles happen) but I still visit the shops just for fun sake. Shoes give me same utopian feelings the same way as books give me. The extended hours that I can spend at book cum coffee shops, it’s not different with shoe shops. And the confession is that I suffer from bootism apart from procrastination.

Well! I can also say while men love boobs, women love shoes. But does anyone questions them? No but they definitely give big stares when their wives/ girlfriends tell them that they have brought another pair of shoes. Regarding boobs, they have their own fancy reasons to give such as:

It is a body part that they do not have and men always want what they don’t have.

They taste so good.

The shape of them gets us excited.

Boobs are a symbol of fertility.

………………

…………………

And gazillion other reasons that you can find here, here and here.

We women have our own reasons why we love shoes.

1. They don’t make us look fat. No matter how many pounds we put on, shoes always fit. They never betray us, and we can always count on them.

2. They make us happy when are feeling sad. We go and shop for shoes during these sad phases.

3. We don’t have to look for a changing room to try them on, and not worry about hidden cameras. You can come with full fledged cameras, and make our movie when we are trying them on. You are free to take the pictures of our naked feet and naked shoes. You can even makes posters of them, and put them on wall.

4. They add vibrancy in our wardrobe.

5. We can wear them according to our moods. If we want to feel on top of the world, we can put my 3 inch high heels. If we want to hit the pavement running, we can rely on our pair of sneakers. When it is snowing, we can slip into double duty heavy boots. Flip flops make us feel at home. When we want to feel like a teenager, we can flaunt my kitten heels. When we want to look bitchy, we’ll wear our snake print boots. Yes! we like all of them.

6. They always compliment our look, and get us compliments in return.

7. With every new shoe we try, we feel fresh. They never fail to satisfy us.

8. Shoes are hot. They make us feel hot as well.

Ha!

And didn’t you hear what Tom Hanks say in Forest Gump? He said “Mama always said you could tell an awful lot about a person by the kind of shoes they wear.” I agree with his Mama because the first thing that I notice in a person is shoes. At times I am a little judgemental as well but I really can’t help a few things about me. But I wonder do men also care so much about their shoes as women do? Men don’t have as many options as women have but it is such a turn off when you see men with unpolished, dirty shoes or may be tattered at times. I think it’s no big deal with them. If it is I’d like to know.

The only catch with collecting different types of shoes is that they should not lead you in serious back problems, and of course you should know how to carry them off. An article here says that you could be setting yourself up for toe nail problems, corns, hammertoe, bunions, tight heel chords, pump bump, neuromas, and stress fractures. Especially high heeled shoes should be worn occasionally not while you are moving around in your house or going for a day long shopping. Things can turn nasty in that case. So, be careful while indulging in collecting your booties.

A friend of mine told me about shoe police, which controls people who do serious abuse to shoes. The role of shoe police is to put shoe abusers in shoe shaped jail, and make them spend their prison term making shoes. If you find any such people, please report here. Is someone listening?

I Haz Got An Award

                                                 

I’d like to thank Drowsey Monkey  for passing this Brillante award to me. It’s very special to me because it is my first ever well earned award. Well earned because this award was given to all the visitors who spoke the most on her blog, and I was the second runner up. Yippeee!! I never thought that my chitter chatter was going to get me an award. Oh! I am welling up now. Love you Drowsey, and thank you so much. As a custom ,I have to pass this award to top 10 commenters but I have 12 bloggers in total in my Scratch Roll . So, I’d like to pass this award to all of you.

 

Thank You.

Finally!

My internet connection was down the whole day yesterday so, could not post the Doodle Body on time. I have over and often realized that I become extremely upset when I don’t have an access to internet. This is happening with me more frequently now because it’s been almost seven months that I have not stepped out of home ,and internet is my only access to the outer world. But when I look seven months back I’d be lying to myself if I’d say that the situation was much better. The only difference between now and then is that before I used to end up spending so much time on internet because we had just started our business so we used to end up working for 18- 20 hours at stretch. Well! could still be excused. But yesterday especially I became very uneasy about not having an access to internet. I actually thought that I have got an internet addiction disorder . There was something that I read at JD’s blog a few days back that really comforted me. She had asked bloglings like me to get away from our blogs .  And I was really thanking her from the bottom of my heart for sharing this. Taking her advice without much ado I went on the terrace for a walk, read a book, perused the entire Sunday magazine, and finally watched ‘Letters from Iwo Jima’.  If you have not watched the movie, you should.  This Academy Award winner is a war film directed by Clint Eastwood with an excellent cast of Ken Watanabe and Kazunari Ninomiya.  Letters from Iwo Jima portrays the Battle of Iwo Jima from the perspective of the Japanese soldiers and is a companion piece to Eastwood’s Flags of Our Fathers, which depicts the same battle from the American viewpoint. My rating is 5/5 for this movie.

 

To find out whether I am internet addicted or not, I took a test here  ,and got a score of 60. The results were quite relieving but had I crossed 80, I would have been in the category of Internet addicts. I am not very far from the score of 80 so, I need to be a little careful.

 

50 -79 points: You are experiencing occasional or frequent problems because of the Internet. You should consider their full impact on your life.

 

So finally Doodle Week has ended. I am both happy and sad. Happy because I wouldn’t have to be organized enough to post every single day. And sad because it was so much of fun and I am going to miss it. This is after many years that I got back to draw something. Sigh!  I think last that I picked up brush was some five years back. Since then college and career took most of my time. So, it became a little nostalgic as well.

 

Finally, here is my Doodle Body!