AFVOA Newletters of Year 2007

Page 12 of 68 invoke a thousand names for each of our deities. We now have handy booklets of names for babies, which become the bone of contention between the father and mother-to-be as well as between in-laws. 46. North, East and West have their own conventions, too numerous to amplify. As Illustrative examples, we have the Sikhs with their Singhs and Kaurs with the same common prefix for both male & female, such as Perminder and Harminder. Being labelled a martial race by the Brits they also have Jarnail and Karnail who turn snooty at Major and Kaptan( Singhs). The Bengalis have both long & abbreviated forms for the same generic origin such as Mukhopadhyaya and Mukherjee, Gangopadhyaya and Ganguli and so on. The Parsis have the convention of naming themselves as per their ancestral professions such as Gheewala and Dotiwala!! 47. The North Indians say they have a difficult time pronouncing the rather long South Indian names (as they put it). For most of them, everyone south of the Vindhyas is a Madrasi. But Major (the) Hari Singh Sandhu , of the Army Training Team at NDA could pronounce the names Govindaswamy and Krishnaswami very well whenever he ordered us to crawl!! Also at the NDA we had KASZ Raju (his full name is not known to me still, but perhaps known to my good friend Colonel Krishnaswami who knows the Roll numbers of all the 120 odd cadets of our 13 th course!! perhaps in the manner of Gorkha Johnnies who are more comfortable in referring to each other by their short numbers than their names!!) 48. One does come across funny situations whenever there is a juxtaposition in naming animate beings. My course-mate Jaswant Singh (may his soul rest in peace) had a precocious son and a well trained Labrador when we were posted at Saugor. When we first called on him, he shouted “Singh Ram”; we were looking for his son but there emerged the black Lab and showed us some of his tricks. Then Jaswant shouted “Rocky” and out came the boy to throw a tantrum!! 49. The Chinese are past masters in changing names to suit the environment. Almost all the Chinese who emigrate to the USA invariably choose short Christian names like John, Ann, Dick, Amy etc. to be easily acceptable there. Some of our own compatriots are also learning the ropes. Radhakrishnan becomes “Rad” and Annapoorni becomes “Annie”. Our grand- daughter, Sonakshi Yeshaswini Dixit goes by the short name “Syd”!! 50. I would now like to share with our veterans extracts of an article on Tambram names which was on the internet a couple of years back and also reproduced in The Hindu later on. Pardon me if you have already seen it and have a little mirth if you have to read it again. This could take you away from the humdrum problems and woes of ECHS etc.!! Here it goes: “This article shows how popular Ambi is .... " Ambi Mama is leading Brahmin relative" – Survey 51. A survey has revealed that 'Ambi Mama' is the leading relative among Tamil Brahmin families worldwide, with six in ten families having one of their own (a 60% representation). Apparently, Ambi Mama held off stiff competition from Mani Mama (with 55% representation) and Baby Chitti (39%) for a well-deserved win. 52. "It's a great day for all Ambi Mamas. All the years of hard work -drinking coffee, criticising the Indian team selection and complaining about blood-pressure - have finally paid off. Yay!", said Ambi Mama, a spokesman for the Ambi Mamas Association of Dear Old Rascals (AMBASSADOR), a division of the Hardcore Brahmin Organisation (HBO). 53. Mani Mamas all over the world watched in anguish as the final results were