What's in a name?

I never really did bother about names and, if I ever had stopped to think about it, I would probably have shrugged my shoulders and said,"What's in a name?" THAT, though, was more in my childhood than later in life.

You know, India is sort of surprising. AND it was even more so in the past. You had TV news-people who mastered the enunciation of 'Slobodan Zivojinovic', but stumbled and stuttered over 'Palaniappan Chidambaram' - so much so you would have thought that the former was from India and the latter from the outer reaches near the North Pole. But, then, sitting comfortably in the south of India, it was all as remote as though it was happening in Outer Mongolia, since Doordarshan was in Delhi, which was 'door ast' - 'far', for those who do not recognize the allusion.

When I shifted to Delhi, though, the fun started. Not immediately but around the time when the Election Ids got issued. Since the chaps came around verbally asking for information and filling the forms up themselves, the fun was not really apparent till I got the Election ID. In Hindi, the name was not bad - except for the fact that the North firmly believes that an 'an' does not belong at the end of the name and so, I was 'Chandrasekar Suresh' and not 'Chandrasekaran Suresh'. THAT, though, did I tell you, was only in Hindi. In English it got rendered as 'Chandarshakhar' AND THAT it remains there, since I did not have a year or two at my disposal to educate the concerned officials about how to spell my name.

One would really think that we people in the south, who have no surnames - only the names of our native town/village and/or our father's name as initials - are a small obscure tribe numbering in the hundreds at best, going by the fact that no government forms ever bother to specify exactly how this is to be entered in any uniform manner. So, with the expand initials in one, name and surname in another and so on and so forth, my name keeps changing from Suresh Chandrasekaran and Chandrasekaran Suresh, when it does not get a thorough make-over like Chandarshakar Suresh.

Also, there is this strange issue. I daresay that people who get knighted are far lesser than the population of people with my style of naming and, yet, it is known that they get called 'Alec' by friends and 'Sir Alec' by others - and never 'Sir Baldwin' or whatever their surname happens to be. The same, though, I am unable to drive into the minds of the same people - that I am 'Suresh' to friends and 'Mr. Suresh' to others and NOT 'Mr. Chandrasekaran', which would be my dad, who had enough people troubling him to not want my lot adding itself to the mix. Now, of course, I have a chance of things changing for the better. I'm sure P.V. Sindhu will not favor being addressed as Ms. Pusarla and will start a change of attitude. (Though, to be sure, even C.V. Raman did not manage it. Even when knighted, he was still Sir C.V. Raman and not Sir. Raman)

Now, I need to tackle a new set of issues. When I was leaving Delhi for Bangalore, my passport was near-expiry and I had it renewed in a hurry. Having stayed within the shores of this country, I have had hardly any reason to look at it till now, when it needs renewal. AND, presto, I find that, though the passport office was RENEWING a passport in the name of 'Chandrasekaran Suresh' and my form was filled in the same way, the passport I now hold is for 'Chandra Sekaran Suresh'. No doubt they took pity on my being deprived of a middle name and decided to gift me one but...

I want to reclaim my name. I find, though, that since the passport HAS been the base for my PAN Card - they too have granted me a middle name, gratis, despite, yes, my filling the form WITHOUT adding that superfluous spacebar between Chandra and Sekaran. Unfortunately, I had opted for the card with a mere 'C. Suresh' on it and, thus, I never knew that this had happened till I tried to align my Aadhar ID - which had the name the way it should be - with my PAN Card.

There I go - now I need to reclaim my name. With a choice between 'Chandarshakhar' and 'Chandra Sekaran' in two ids and with only the latest one - Aadhar - having it the right way, I do not know how it is all going to end.

So, soon you may all have to revise your opinion of what my name is...and so may I!