Raju Ban Gaya Name Guru

Would you have watched ‘PK’ had the film been called Hey Bhagwaan or let’s say Badey Kaanwaala? The fanboy in you would have still headed to the multiplex but I am willing to bet my last paisa that your level of intrigue would have been a lot lesser.

Clearly, Rajkumar Hirani knows a thing or two about names than you can possibly imagine. His titles are always character centric but like any income tax return, it hides more than it reveals. ‘Munna Bhai MBBS’ gives no inkling of ‘Jaadu ki jhappi’. ‘Lage Raho’ gives no clue of ‘Gandhigiri’ and ‘3 Idiots’ doesn’t feel like a satire on the education system.

That said, the choice of PK was partly fortuitous as Raju Hirani had originally planned to name it as ‘Talli’ or more specifically ‘Ek Tha Talli’. The release of ‘Ek Tha Tiger’ forced a rethink and he chose PK over ‘Talli’. May be because ‘Talli’ creates a misimpression that the film is about an alcoholic while PK can pass off as a nickname or the initials of a person.

Even with character names, no one has come up with quirkier ones than Raju. The lead character of Chetan Bhagat’s ‘Five Point Someone’ was Ryan Oberoi. Any lesser director adapting the story would have faithfully stuck to Ryan. But Mr. Hirani is not your average auteur.

He picked Ranchoddas Shamaldas Chanchad instead. The other alias for Aamir in the movie was Phunsukh Wangdu. In another era, Ranchoddas would have been the hero’s dad and Phunsukh possibly a Nepalese sidekick. To select un-heroic monikers for heroes requires chutzpah. And Raju saab has plenty of it.

His desire to stay away from the same old Vijay, Rahul and Raj has led the genial director to the doorsteps of the unusual. Anushka plays the role of ‘Jagat Janani’ urf ‘Jaggu’ in PK. I can’t recollect a single Hindi movie heroine bestowed with such loopiness.

The minor characters in the Hirani ensemble are always a delight. If Circuit and Short Circuit had the audience in splits in ‘Munnabhai’, Centimeter and Millimeter took the cake in ‘3 Idiots’. Thankfully, he’s not repeated the trick in ‘PK’. And that only means ‘All Izz Well’.

How Tamil got its Dum.

The Bhai in Rajinikanth country has a different connotation from the Bhai in Salman Khan’s universe. Out here, he’s the god who feeds our greed for biriyani. He’s the walking-talking google for any movie you want. He’s the grocer who discovered home delivery long before BigBasket did.

Lungis or leather jackets, perfumes or pop-up toasters, mobiles or microwaves, high street or low street, he’s the go-to guy for everything. Among other things, the affable neighbourhood Muslim also managed to spice up Madras Tamil by generously sprinkling some Urdu into the equation. Let’s explore his delectable contributions.

Let’s start with Jalsa. The city slang for ‘having pure pleasure’ is derived from the Urdu word for social gatherings famous for their convivial atmosphere. Majaa is no different. It’s a derivation from ‘mazaa’ (meaning: fun).

One more expression of enjoyment Tamaashu is an offspring of ‘Tamasha’, the Persian description for entertainment spectacles. Yet another term for ‘ostentation’ is Jabardastu which came from ‘Zabardast’ (grand). It’s no coincidence that a considerable part of the Chennai vocabulary devoted to celebration, has Urdu roots. One can attribute it to the domineering influence of the Nawabs of Arcot, who lived near the precincts of the city.

Street Urdu of Triplicane left a more profound imprint on the local lingo. The expletive ‘Bazaari aurat’ (slut) gave rise to Bajaari (cheap woman). The swear word ‘Beimani’ (cheat) morphed with time into Bemani (oaf). And ‘Bevkoof’ (fool) was sauteed and roasted into Baeku (idiot).

Every smoker’s nirvana, the Dum, is from the Hindustani word for ‘breath’. Sarakku, the bootlegged liquor, owes its origins to ‘sarak’ which means ‘to steal’. Another popular campus parlance ‘maal’ (matter) refers to ‘goods’ in Urdu.

Quite a few of today’s jaam bajaar jargon has an etymological history worth sharing. Mamool (the dreaded bribe) is from Mamun (money). Bejaar (being distressed about a problem) is a direct descendant of ‘Bezaar’ (displeased).

Balti (somersault of the turncoat) comes from ‘Palti’ (flip). Ushaar Party (Smart Alec) is an obvious derivation from ‘Hoshiyaar’ (clever). The Tamil word for breakfast (Nashta) is also a loan word. Even ‘Ghatham Ghatham’, the superstar’s trademark quip in the film ‘Baba’, is from Khatam (finito). Having gifted so much to our lives, the Bhai surely deserve a lot more gethu (respect), don’t you think?

Starry Eyed Babies

When actress Genelia D’Souza delivered a baby boy last week, I could see the name coming from a thousand miles. Mrs. Riteish Deshmukh named her child ‘Riaan’ (the Persian word for ‘Little King’).

Riaan was quite predictable as it happens to a portmanteau of sorts of the parents’ first names. I am quite sure, if it had been a daughter, they’d have called her ‘Riaah’. More because Riaah and Riaan have the same name number as their numerology-loving dad!

To put things in perspective, slicing and dicing sound components of mom and pop names is the most common baby naming trick among Indian celebrities.

Forty years ago, when Ravi Tandon (the director of ‘Khel Khel Mein’) and his wife Veena were fishing for a sweet name for their girl, they christened her as ‘Raveena Tandon’. In 2001, Saurav Ganguly and Dona Roy applied the same template when they picked ‘Sana’ for their little one. The ‘Riaan’ nomenclature is but the latest instance of deployment of this time-tested formula.

Incidentally, Amrita Arora’s son is Rayan and Madhur Dixit’s boy is Ryan. The inadvertent choice of a commonplace name is again a commonplace problem in India. Which is why celebs walk that extra mile to look different.

Fathers and mothers in search of uniqueness would do well to worship Arshad Warsi and Maria Goretti. They selected the rather bizarre ‘Zeke Zidaan’ and ‘Zene Zoe’ for their kids! Another Zed freak is Shikhar Dhawan. Although he chose the more conventional Zorawar (Arabic for ‘brave’).

Opting for foreign sounding names is the easiest way to stand out from the unwashed masses. When Farah Khan and Sirish Kunder had triplets, they turned to Russian for ‘Anya’ and ‘Czar’. The third one was given the very Latin ‘Diva’. Farhan Akhtar, true to his twitter moniker of being @FarOutAkhtar, handpicked the Japanese ‘Akira’ and the Buddhist ‘Shakya’ for his children. Sushmita Sena favoured the French ‘Renee (meaning ‘reborn’) for her daughter.

Konkana Sen Sharma and Ranvir Shorey have to be handed the most literate couple award for naming their son as ‘Haroon’ after Salman Rushdie’s ‘Haroun and the Sea of Stories’. But the most well-read Indian cricketer Rahul Dravid, wasn’t very adventurous when he chose Samit and Anvay for his sons. Like always, perhaps, he was playing by the book!

Getting Breathless Over Wireless

In the days when I used to trip over geeky pickup lines, I came across one that really cracked me up. It goes something like this: “Is your name Wi-Fi ‘coz I am feeling a connection?” In my head I wondered what if the repartee had been: “No, I am Bluetooth. And I don’t think your device is up for pairing!”

Cheesy lines apart, that was the first time, I gave Wi-Fi some deep thought. I figured the word was invented in 1999 by Interbrand when a bunch of nerds wanted a catchier equivalent for ‘IEEE 802.11b Direct Sequence’. Wi-Fi was a play on Hi-Fi and it’s a fine example of how some deft naming has made our world, a hipper place.

Talking of hip nomenclature, it might help to cast a lazy eye on your neighbourhood wireless networks. I can assure you that it can be a neat source of levity. Imagine the sheer pleasure of discovering a ‘Mi-fi, Not Your-Fi’ instead of a bland network-operator name. Imagine if the Ambi Mama next door labels his network as ‘Wi Believe I Can Fi’, won’t you see him very differently?

Being inventive is a pre-requisite for nerds. Which is why on the internet, you’ll discover many genres of wicked Wi-Fi names. Here are a few samplers to get you initiated:

An IT administrator once chose ‘Hack If You Can’ as the network name. He was stumped, the very next day, when he discovered someone had changed it to ‘Challenge Accepted’.

Another online story is pretty legendary. A mother, not exactly known to be facile with her mobile phone, kept bugging her son by constantly asking him ‘which network is ours?’ The son solved the problem once for all by christening it as ‘Use This One Mom’.

The ones I like more are programmed to piss-off pesky neighbours who wish to leech off your bandwidth. ‘No Free Wi-Fi For You’, ‘Screw You’, ‘Get Your Own Damned Internet’, ‘YourNotWelcome’, ‘FBI Surveillance’ and ‘I Read Your Emails’ are telling examples of this sub-genre.

The best name award should perhaps be shared by ‘Pretty Fly For A Wi-Fi’, ‘TellYourWifiLoveHer’ and ‘The Promised LAN’. But my personal favourite is a coffee shop’s moniker. It says: ‘Buy Another Cup You Cheapskate’. How cool is that!