Names that spell magic.

Magic has lost all its magic. These days, it feels more like a sleekly packaged act of illusion engineering. The eye-popping, jaw-dropping, awe-inducing wonderment that used to accompany the abracadabra has mysteriously vanished into thin air. All one gets to hear now is the incredulous catcalls of killjoys screaming: “Haven’t we seen this on YouTube before?”

Things were much better in the pre-internet era. The worldwide brotherhood of magicians went to great lengths to create an aura of mystique around their tricks. No one ever wrote ‘sleight-of-hand’ manuals or shot ‘Magic for Beginners’ videos explaining the elaborate deceptions. Part of the charm flowed from the larger-than-life persona projected in the public eye. It also helped to have strange names that lit the fire of intrigue in the mind of the beholder.

The 17th century ‘Conjurer of Kings’, Jacob Meyer, assumed the name ‘Philadelphia’ when he chose to tease emperors by producing ghosts out of smoke, flower showers from the sky and appearing in four places at the same moment.

Long before the invention of the fictional Harry Potter, there was a black magician named ‘Potter’ (Richard Potter). He was famed for dancing on fire, walking on eggs without breaking them, and climbing up a yarn and vanishing into the clouds.

In the late 19th century, Erich Weisz who dreamt of making it big, decided to call himself as ‘Houdini’ as a nod to the French magician Robert-Houdin. The name change worked as Erich ended up becoming the world’s greatest escape artist.

Likewise, Samri S. Baldwin, the American legendary for occultist psychic acts, used to bill himself as ‘The White Mahatma’ to add that Indian zing to his performances. David Bamberg opted for ‘Fu Manchu’ to give himself an exotic Chinese makeover while doing shows in Argentina.

Even the man who made Statue of Liberty disappear renamed himself as David Copperfield (after Charles Dickens’ character) to stand out from his peers. If he had chosen David Seth Kotkin instead, who knows, he might have had to settle for the invisibility of anonymity! BOTTOMLINE: If you want to become a magician, pull out a new name rabbit out of your hat.

DeNiros. DeCaprios. Decoded.

The Italians are a large hearted race. They gave us the ice cream cone, eye glasses, Eau de Cologne, typewriter, piano, espresso machine, thermometer, the Mona Lisa, the Vespa scooter, the Ferrari car, the Armani suit, 600 types of pasta, 500 scrumptious pizzas, 400 varieties of cheese, 350 concoctions of wine and above all, the ever luscious Monica Bellucci.

May I take the liberty of adding one more unsung item to this compellingly impressive repertoire – the finest sounding surnames in the world!

Yup, let’s have the grace to admit it: There is no match to the lilt of a Lamborghini, the polish of a Prada and the gentility of a Gucci. It is a fact that a Bulgari sounds infinitely more sophisticated than a Balaraju and a Vivaldi is far more pleasant to the ear, than a Vivekananda. Some attribute it to the phonoaesthetic nature of the language. I haven’t yet figured out why.

All I know is Italian surnames aren’t as beautiful or profound when one gets around to studying their literal meaning. For example, Botticelli means ‘Little barrel’ and it was initially used as a sniggery nickname to describe rotund folks. Somehow, over the years, it has emerged as a renowned cognomen with a mellifluous ring.

Ferrari, for all its uber-rich cues, is a derivative of ‘one who works with Ferrum (iron)’. Or simply put: a highfalutin euphemism for a blacksmith! Zappa, for all its coolness, is Italian for ‘hoe’ (an agricultural tool). The Cavalli in Roberto Cavalli comes from the word ‘cavallero’ which decodes to ‘horseman’. And the very uppity Cerutti alludes to just about anyone with curly hair.

I am damn sure, the companies that launched these brands were perfectly aware of the semantic ordinariness of their monikers. They still went ahead because of the euphonic possibilities.

I would do the same as all that matters is how the name feels when you utter it. DiCaprio has a royal vibe to it. If I told you, it just translates to ‘goat’ you’d probably junk it. Ditto with De Niro (black haired), Fellini (fur maker) and Coppola (flat cap). Don’t you agree, signor?

The Butchers in Baggy Green

Bleeding Down Under is an experience, not particularly unique to women. Legions of overseas cricketers who’ve crossed swords with the mighty Australians in the striped battlefields of The Gabba or WACA will vouch for this embarrassing haemorrhage.

Dhoni’s Boys have suffered the same bloody indignity in Melbourne and Sydney. Perhaps the time has come for BCCI to add tampons to the cricketing gear of our hallowed stars. Else, Perth might provoke more mirth about the Agneepath-turned-Ughneepath series.

To be fair, a meaty portion of the credit for the all-round-mauling should go to Cricket Australia for assembling a squad of surgical butchers who relentlessly sliced, diced and cleaved through the veins, nerves and arteries of the hapless Indian XI.

You’d be fascinated to know that the knockout performance of the proud baggy greeners was foretold by their names. The fearless David Warner was destined to be on the front foot as his name meant ‘beloved warrior’. His partner Edward Cowan (meaning: wealth protecting commoner) makes the perfect foil as he was prognosticated to be defensive in nature. Ricky Ponting (Strong power bridger) was prophesied to be the ever dependable link between generations. The selfless sagacity of Michael Clarke (Learned like god) can be attributed to the wisdom embedded in his moniker.

Mike Hussey (Master of the house) stamps his authority on most matches because he was baptised so. Brad Haddin (Broad blossoming hill) hasn’t yet bloomed into a Gilchrist due to the ‘work-in-progress’ aspect of his surname. The heartlessness of Peter Siddle (Stony wide gap) in squeaking through the bat and pad was forecast when his dad decided to christen him.

Likewise, Ben bailed out the Aussies as Hilfenhaus translates to ‘Helping House’ in German. Fast bowling spearhead James Pattinson (Noble supplanter) who replaced injured pace sensation Pat Cummins in the New Zealand tour, didn’t let down his captain as the script was written when he was named!

Don’t you find the performance-lies-in-the-name theory intriguing? The acid test for it could rest with Ryan Harris (little home ruler). If his etymological roots are anything to go by, I am afraid we can kiss the series, a gory goodbye.

Reviving a Badey Saab

My tiny brain has extra large spam folders for irrelevant stuff. 99% of what I see makes it to this exalted space. News items related to dieting, fitness, investment, dogs and cars are given ‘Accelerated Access’ to choice sub-folders in my mental trash can. I rarely pause to think about any of these subjects.

But on Christmas Eve, I guess the spirit of generosity suffused my innards. So for the first time ever, instead of automatically ‘Marking to Spam’, I actually spent time on an article about a vaguely familiar automobile brand. The trigger for it was the stark headline: ‘End of the road for Saab’.

Now for those who know their hatchbacks, Saab is no small fry. It’s as iconic as our Ambassador. It was the first ever four-wheeler to make safety belts a standard feature. Having sold over 3 million cars, the 64-year-old Swedish brand enjoys the reputation of being unassuming, smart, efficient, consistent, dependable and affordable.

‘So why are experts writing its obituary?’ was the question playing on my mind. A cursory glance of the sales figures revealed the sob story. In 2010, the company managed to sell just 30,000 cars. That’s one tenth of what Hyundai sells in India!

Does that mean the scrapheap is the final destination for Saab? I am of the view that if Mahindra or any Indian Group were to make a bid for it, they can turn things around. The reason for my optimism lies in one simple fact: Saab is an Urdu word with terrific connotations in South Asia.

It’s a term of endearment that crops up often in conversations. Bhai Saab, Major Saab, Laat Saab and Memsaab are commonly used appellations. To millions of Hindustanis, the expression ‘Saala main toh Saab ban gaya’ means reaching a stratospheric social status - almost on par with a knighthood.

Therefore, milking the linguistic potential of Saab is clearly the roadmap forward for the struggling brand. Imagine the sensation the car will create if we launch customizable models for celebrities that lets a Mister Bachchan announce his name as Bachchan Saab and a certain Sachin flaunt his awesomeness with Tendulkar Saab. We could even have surname models like 'Khan Saab', 'Chopra Saab', 'Kapoor Saab' and 'Ganguly Saab'. The possibilities are endless. With some deft ethnic marketing, me thinks SAAB could just race away with some much needed market share in hamra Bharat. Wonder if anyone can hear me honking.

Top 11 of Twenty Eleven

Rag picking is the second noblest activity after enema administration. It’s an immaculately sattvic way to end a debauched year.

Or so I consoled myself when I set out to rummage through the good, bad, and downright ugly names, littered all over the web. My aim was to fish out a fistful of pearls from a sea of rubbish. I am glad to report that I’ve unearthed some gems. Allow me the pleasure of sharing the booty with you.

Best Band Name: In a landscape filled with wannabe names that assault your senses (Samples: Supersonic Piss, Vomit Erection, Lecherous Gaze and Cocaine Moustache), only one band struck a chord. That’s the Canada-based metal quintet, ‘A Sight for Sewn Eyes’. Given their marked preference for live gigs, the name is an intriguingly apt and evocative choice.

Best Album Name: My vote goes to Coldplay’s ‘Mylo Xyloto’ for its quirky musicality. Best Named Song:Before you go WTF, lemme assure you it’s not Dhanush’s WTK. That privilege shall be accorded to Irshad Kamil for creating the anthemic awesomeness - ‘Sadda Haq’.

Best Book Title: There were two serious contenders – Haruki Murakami’s 1Q84 (Kyu is Japanese for 9) and ‘Horoscopes for the Dead’ by Billy Collins. 1Q94 is fascinating and threatens to stick in your mind. But it doesn’t pique you as much as the multi layered Horoscopes. To me, that was the clincher.

Best Named English movie: The nominees were: ‘From Prada to Nada’, ‘Gnomeo & Juliet’, ‘Judy Moody & the Not Bummer Summer’ and ‘A Good Old Fashioned Orgy’. I couldn’t resist the story telling charm of the orgasmic one. Best Named Hindi film: It was a three-way tie between ‘The Dirty Picture’, ‘No One Killed Jessica’ and ‘Ra.One’. But I’ll stick my neck out for Jessica. Best Named Tamil flick: ‘Mankatha’ dhaan!

Best Celebrity Baby Name: A little birdie tells me it’s Ethan Hawke’s ‘Indiana’. Best Named App: iThink iLuv iPad’s ‘SIRI’. Best Named Software: Android’s lickable, likable, lovable ‘Ice Cream Sandwich’. And finally, the Best Named Party: Well, Silvio Berlusconi’s ‘Bunga Bunga’ has to take the cake for its sheer kinkiness!

Solpa Yeddy, Solpa Gowda.

Sometime in the late seventies, when Indira Gandhi had pressed the ‘Emergency’ button, she air dashed to Chennai with our acting president Basappa Danappa Jatti. A mischievous Tamil tabloid put out an almost blasphemous headline to commemorate the event: Indira Gandhi Jatti Udan Vandaar! All of Madras was in splits as jatti meant underwear in the local lingo. And the line could be interpreted as ‘Indira Arrives In Her Undies!’

Some might find this distasteful. But I found it amusing. In a funny sort of way, the anecdote piqued my curiosity to learn more about Kannadiga names. So when I got down to researching the subject, I discovered that large sections of Karnataka use the PFN template for naming their children - P standing for Personal Name, F for Father’s and N for Native place. By this logic Jatti must be an ancestral town and not some local inner wear, made in Tirupur.

I also noticed that in a few cases the PFN formula might get flipped and become NFP. Bookanakere Siddalingappa Yeddyurappa is an exemplification of this format. As in, Bookanakare is the native place, Siddalingappa - his dad’s, and Yeddyurappa is his given name, which in turn, is a nod to a temple deity in Yadiyur, a town in Tumkur. Somanahalli Malliah Krishna (SM Krishna) is yet another NFP beneficiary.

But ‘What about Gowda?’ you may ask. Well, like many surnames in this part of the country, it has a fairly rural ancestry. Gowda is said to have been derived from the archaic Dravidian word Kavundan (meaning: village head). Incidentally, the Tamil Gounder has the same root.

If we turn our gaze to some other popular surnames, lots of insights can be gleaned. Hegde (head of fort), Baliga (soldier with spear), Shenoy (captain), Nayak (commander) and Havaldar (Sergeant) owe their origins to medieval military terms. While Kamath (works on soil), Bhatt (priest), Shroff (money changer), Javali (clothes dealer), and Shetty (Chettiar or Seth) typify the occupation of the tribes. And the very Coorgi Ponappa (gold), Cariappa (black), Nanjappa (wetland), Nagappa (snake) and Chinnappa (small) feel fairly descriptive in nature. Wonder, how they got their Nameappa!

The Small Town Psyche

Wear your Kafka cap for a fleeting second. Metamorphosize into that little ant crawling up that speck of saccharine on that teensy piece of cake lying carelessly on the floor, just behind that forgotten dustbin, positioned near that dark brown door next to your kitchen sink. And ask yourself one question: would anyone, I mean ANYONE, even care about your existence?

Well, that’s the story of the small town in this cold, callous world. Most of them are condemned to lead a lifetime of anonymity in distant nooks and crannies untouched by the whimsical rays of limelight. Quite naturally, small towners, as a species, somehow always have this inner mojo to ‘get noticed’. The accent, the kooky dress sense, distinctive guffaws and an appetite for setting inane records are offshoots of this desire for undue attention.

Thankfully, several itsy-bitsy settlements in America have figured out an effortless way of getting the recognition they crave for – just choose an unusual name!

Here are some stellar examples: Ding Dong, a community in Bell County, Texas, got its 5 minutes of fame when Ripley’s Believe it or Not featured the township for its oddly amusing name. Boring in Oregon was originally named after William H. Boring, an early resident. But when the city signs started appearing on the highway as ‘Boring Oregon City’ it evoked a national chuckle. There’s been no turning back, ever since.

The level of interest garnered by weirdly named towns has inspired many more to join the bandwagon. So for every Why in Arizona, there’s a Whynot in North Carolina. For every Hooker in Arkansas, there’s a Dickey, waiting somewhere in Maine. And for every Gravity in Iowa, there’s a certain Uncertain lurking in the horizon, in Texas!

Although city slickers might feel a tinge of cringe while picking such names, small towners don’t seem to share this sense of shame. Otherwise why on earth would two precincts (one in Wisconsin and the other in Illinois) proudly call themselves Embarrass? May be there’s a lesson here for our Jhumritalayas. May be it’s time for villages to rechristen themselves as Narak, Badnaam or something edgier?

How Iyerland Became Ireland.

Never underestimate the Tamilian. He may constitute just 1% of the world population but his influence is all pervasive. That may seem like the typical chest-puffing ‘Tamizhan da!’ bluster from a T-Rajendhar cult movie but the fact remains that the kaapi-drinking, quarter-cutting, thayir saadam man has done a lot more for the spread of the human race than he’s given credit for.

Ireland, for instance, owes its Celtic culture to the Druids or Dravids who carried the R1b gene (a sibling of the dominant R1a gene that permeates Tam Brams, Kallars and Mudaliars) from South Asia to the Irish highlands via Central Asia. There’s enough linguistic evidence to back this claim. Here’s proof:

Kerry is a surname that means dark. Doesn’t it sound like the Tamil word ‘kari’ (black)? Kevin (beautiful) is a twin of Cavin (the Cavin in Cavin Kare) – which, by the way, is sentamizh for grace and beauty. Ian or Eoin (god) seems like a close cousin of our very own Ayan (god). Abban is synonymous with Appan (father). And Patrick (noble) has this ring of being learned enough to read a ‘pattrikkai’!

It’s not just the names. Even the words seem to have the same roots. Mala in both languages mean ‘hill’. Faiche (stretch of grass) resembles pachai. Mac (son) is derived from Makan. ‘Oi’ will pass off as an expression of endearment in Dublin as well as Dindigul.

What’s eerily similar is the Irish naming custom: the first son is always named after the father’s father; the second son after mother’s father; and the daughters are named after the mothers. Tam Brams follow an identical tradition! If you thought the parallels stops there, then just go and google about the many stone henges and cairn circles that have been discovered in Tiruvannamalai & Tiruttani.

Given all of these coincidences, you’d think our archaeologists are busy burrowing deep into the earth to ferret out more evidence in support of this theory. Sadly, they aren’t. May be someone needs to goad them to probe further. Else, the Murugans of Tiruvellikeni will never get to find their historical connect with the Morgans of Kilkenny.

The Beti B Naming Contest

They say over 30,000 girl babies are born, every day, in India. If you do the math you’ll discover that nearly 480,000 girls have been hand-delivered by the Stork Exchange ever since that epochal moment, when you first heard about the birth of Beti B, and this very second when you’re reading my mundane words. That’s about 4 times the lexicon size of Hindi! So we’re in a sticky situation here - of having more babies than names.

Given this name famine, parents are under immense pressure to come up with something unique and creative. Perhaps this was the trigger for Abhishek Bachchan’s now-famous tweet requesting his fans to post their suggestions for the new born.

The ad man inside me feels, that Junior Bachchan, missed a trick by not announcing a ‘Naam Aapka, Beti Mera’ contest. He could have easily tied up with Idea for this and done a 360 degree advertising campaign to generate names via SMS. All the submitted names could have been uploaded onto BachchanKiBachchi.com and several media partners could have been roped in to prune down this massive database into a manageable Top 10 through a viewer poll. And then the final announcement could have been made on ‘Ash you like it’ - an hour-long reality show televised nationally. Alas, what an opportunity lost!

Anyways, coming back to Beti B. A little birdie tells us that the Rais and the Bachchans prefer a name starting with ‘A’. That rules out Kolaveri - a killer choice by any standards!

Let’s look at some other possibilities: Abhiwarya is an enticing option considering it fuses the best of dad and mom. Anamika (nameless one) might make a lot of sense as Jaya Bahaduri once essayed the eponymous role in a Bollywood movie starring the unforgettable Sanjeev Kumar. Amita (limitless) is interesting as Amita Bachchan sounds every inch like Big B. Ashi (miracle) will make a great fit as that was Aishwarya’s name in Aur Pyaar Ho Gaya. Aaina, Avatara, Antaratica or anything else might sound equally good. But the key question is: will the Guru say, ‘Lock kiya jaai’?

The Maya of New States

There are three things one can never be sure of in life: the moment of birth, the moment of death and the number of states in India. The first two events can be forecast with some certainty using arcane powers of the occult but the third one is guaranteed to flummox even seasoned seers. Such is the unpredictability that shrouds the cartography of Indian polity.

During the independence era, we had 562 princely states and 17 provinces. That ace weaver Sardar Vallabhai Patel somehow managed to stitch together a tapestry of unity with the twin threads of nationalism and federalism. But then, our territorial gluttony kicked in sometime in 1956 and thus was born our never-ending appetite to divide and mutate into a mélange of linguistic units. The result: every decade we end up either demanding or creating new states citing some excuse or the other.

In the beginning, the demands seemed to make sense. But now, it feels as if no one really gives a fig about financial viability any more. It’s become one heck of a free-for- all. Almost like a wedding buffet. Everyone with an appetite has queued up for the goodies. That includes Queen Mayawati who’s brazenly proposed to carve up Uttar Pradesh into Ma, Ya, Wa & Ti (my code names for Awadh, Bundelkhand, Purvanchal and Paschim Pradesh) on an elephantine whim.

My fear is this politically inspired move might just inspire a million more groups to make a case for creation of edgy new principalities based on the flimsiest of ideologies. For example, what is going to be our justification for rejecting the creation of Tendulkar Pradesh? Or for that matter Bachchan Bhoomi, Rajni Nadu, Chiru Desam, and Salmankhanistan.

The way things are going, we as a nation, might soon end up with more states than the USA. The only way to arrest this farcical development is to announce certain basic parameters for state formation. What is required is an elucidation of minimum economy size, geographical area, natural resources and population to qualify for statehood. Otherwise every Pondy Bazaar will aspire to be a Pondicherry!

Iski Lee, Uski Lee & Sabki Lee

One of the greatest contributions of Shah Rukh Khan, to this joke-starved world, has been his extravagant 150-crore initiative to revive interest in that old campus art form called ‘Bruce Lee’ jokes. Couched as a science fiction superhero movie - SRK’s Ra.One - is well and truly an elaborate 154-minute surrogate commercial to peddle the infectious cheesiness of the Iski Lee, Uski Lee & Sabki Lee sub genre of Made-in-India puns.

For the dim-bulbs who still don’t know what I am alluding to, the Bruce Lee Joke (BLJ) is the rite of passage for any Groucho who wants to be a Marx. It’s the adolescent brand of DIY drollery that’s about creating a Chinese character by playing on the word LEE. To put it in a Tamil context, it’s about inventing the mother of all mokkais.

A BLJ is very much like a sneeze. It just happens effortlessly. And when it happens, at least one person in the room will be able to see the humour in the hatchoo. The beauty of it is, anyone can join the fun. The template BLJ is always about coming up with punny names by posing bizarre questions.

Questions like ‘If Bruce Lee were to reincarnate as a naive Indian woman, what would you call her?’ The answer to that would be Bholee Bhalee. That didn’t amuse you, eh? Okay, here’s one more. What would be the name of Bruce Lee’s married Indian sister? Sumanga Lee. His epileptic Tamil uncle? Kaka Va Lee. And his kanjoos brother? Miser Lee!

The trick is to play it like ping pong. First you serve a dolly such as ‘What is Bruce Lee’s favourite delivery? Goog Lee.’ The moment someone hears this, they’ll think, ‘Ah, I can do better!’ And an old PJ will tumble out. That’s a signal for you to try an original Chinese chop. You should reply: “What car does he drive? Bent Lee!” Before your opponent can collect himself, you must go for the kill with “His favourite Bollywood movie? Dellee Bellee!” Deed done, battle won, you must khiskofy via the patlee galee and shout: 'Teri Lay Lee’!

The Prosaic Names of Poets

Parents are rarely prescient. They don’t possess that mystic ability of Paul the Octopus to foretell the future. So they end up giving us strange hand-me-down names that have no connection to who we are or what we’re gonna do when we grow up.

Brit couple Alice & John Lockwood Kipling fared no better in this name game. They fell in love in 1863 at Rudyard Lake in Staffordshire, England. To immortalize their courtship, they named their love child - Rudyard Kipling - which literally means ‘Red Yard used for preserving Salmon’. Had they known that their imaginative boy would go on to win the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907, they would have certainly bestowed him with something more profound.

Kipling is not the only great bard with a misfit name. Many of his illustrious predecessors, peers and successors were subjected to similar doses of embarrassment by their doting dads and moms. Geoffrey Chaucer may sound sophisticated today. But back then, in the times of The Canterbury Tales, it had a very pedestrian etymology. Derived from ‘peaceful maker of leggings’, Chaucer represented anything but sublime.

Keats was worse. It connoted ‘herdsman or worker at the sheds’. Examining its meaning in isolation no one would even visualise him as the wordsmith who wrote ‘a thing of beauty is a joy forever’. Ditto with Lord Byron (Lord of cattle sheds), Percy Shelley (Hunter on the banks of a river), Sylvia Plath (Forrest maid) and Walt Whitman (Commander of White Men).

Some Indian poets have been a bit luckier. Kabir was blessed with the Persian word for ‘The Great’. Javed Akhtar was named after the ‘Eternal Star’. But people like Sahir Ludhianvi (Charmer from Ludhiana), Kannadasan (Devotee of Krishna) and Gulzar (Flower garden) weren’t as fortunate.

Sahir was the pseudonym adopted by Abdul Hayi (The Alive Servant). And every Bollywood buff knows that Gulzar was born as Sampooran Singh (100% Lion). The only poet who got a name he deserved was probably Gibran Kahlil Gibran. Khalil is Arabic for ‘friend’ and Gibran means ‘most able one’. The rhythmic tautology of Gibran just underscores his talent – how lyrical!

Four Rahuls & The Wall

The mind-numbingly predictable nature of our daily grind often throws up one disturbing question: Are we all just remixes of the same song? I mean, although our lives appear to march to different beats, our core theme seems to be resoundingly similar, right?

With this as the basic premise, let’s explore the destinies of five very different people connected by the umbilical cord of the same first name. Let’s put their personas under the microscope and see if we can identify the signature tune that binds them.

The given name I am gonna pick for our seriously trivial exercise is Rahul - which also happens to be SRK’s name in 7 blockbusters including the humongous popular Dil Toh Pagal Hai, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, and Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham.

Now Rahul means ‘conqueror of all miseries’ in Sanskrit. So by definition all Rahuls should have a life-curve full of crests and troughs. Rahul Dravid’s career path is a living testimony to this fact.

In 1999 World Cup, Dravid was the Top Scorer. In 2007 however, he had the most awful run as the captain of the team that exited the world cup prematurely. In 2011, when everyone wrote him off, The Wall stood tall, and ended up scoring 69 runs from 79 balls in his final ODI match!

‘Against all odds’ seems to be the recurring number in any Rahul’s biography. Take Rahul Sharma, the leg spinner who battled facial paralysis and a dodgy vision to make it to the Indian Squad. Or Rahul Mahajan, the son of the slain leader Pramod Mahajan, who slumped to a personal low with the Cocaine Overdose episode and then bounced back as a Reality Show Star in Bigg Boss 2.

Rahul Bose’s story has seen as many twists and turns. He began with a bang with English August. Followed it up with a string of flops. And remerged as the superstar of art house cinema. Rahul Gandhi’s destiny has strangely witnessed a similar pattern of ups and downs. The thing to see is if the princeling lives up to his name and hits a crescendo soon.

How Names Affect Behaviour.

Let’s play a wicked game. I have put you in a small room without an internet connection or mobile phone. You have to pick 1 candidate for an elite job without conducting an interview. You won’t be given any résumés. No clue about age, sex, work experience or how that person looks. All you’ll get is a few names. You’ll have less than 10 seconds to make your choice. READY?

The names are: Kanda, Mookiah, Sapna, Russell and Banumathi. Chant these faceless names in your head. And now take your pick. Before you arrive at a decision point, remember it’s for a top job in a 5-star hotel. OK, have you made your choice?

Alright, let me leap to my first guess. Mookiah didn’t make the cut, right? I knew it, you racist pig! You didn’t find his name hep enough, na? Poor Banumathi would have suffered the same fate. I bet your fat rear that your choice would have been either Sapna or Russell. Kanda wouldn’t have even figured in your radar!

See how my Sigmund Fraud act worked? I could sniff your answer from a mile. A big reason for this predictability is our baggage. The truth is: we are as biased as a Neo Nazi.

We made some primal assumptions in our heads based on our limited experience and exposure to people. We prejudged Banumathi to be the behenji types. We consigned Mookiah to a 2-star job. Kanda unfortunately sounded a little too local for a 5-star hotel. Russell had this white-skin aura going for him. And Sapna somehow conjured up images of a hot bimbo who’d be at ease pampering the glitterati.

That’s how our mind operates. We revel in passing judgments without any concrete basis. We assume all Ramanujams to be nerds! We can never picture a Katrina as a house maid, a Sundaralingam as a stand up comedian, and a Gandimathi as a super model. If the name is Bond, we parrot James Bond. If it’s Smitha, we imagine Silk Smitha. May be that’s why Shah Rukh quipped, “My name is Khan. And I am not a terrorist.”

Names that make your day.

Steve Jobs was no magician. He was an excellent illusionist. With his astounding quantum of 317 patents, the bespectacled billionaire just bedazzled the world into believing that he was a peerless genius worthy of an immortal halo and millennia of hero worship.

To put things in perspective, an Australian inventor named Kia Silverbrook holds the world record for the most number of patents. Despite having 4,214 inventions to his credit, I am sure you didn’t even know that he exists!

Now you might argue that JOBS IS GOD because he gave you the iMac, iPod, iPad & the iPhone. Well, all I can say is iDisagree. There are worthier folks who’ve walked this earth who probably deserve as much or more acclaim. Say someone like George Crum, the cook from Saratoga Springs without whom crispy potato chips would have never felt the caress and crunch of the masticating mouth. Or for that matter James Goodfellow, the jolly good fellow, who gave us the freedom to withdraw money anytime by simply keying in a Personal identification Number in an ATM.

If one were to judge greatness by the number of lives saved, then spare a thought for Charles Drew, the doctor who drew up the blueprint for the first ever blood bank. A million babies have benefited from John Wild’s idea of using Ultrasound for imaging the human body. How many of you shed a tear for him when he passed away in 2009?

The trouble with most of us is we’re all so self-absorbed that we often forget to celebrate the invisible giants who make us look taller than we actually are. How many of us gush about Willem Koeff, the man who invented dialysis? How many gadget freaks created a Facebook fan page for Martin Cooper, the man who designed the first mobile phone?

For all this moral posturing, I am as pathetic as you when it comes to remembering those who made it all possible. Nama Sutra wouldn’t have lasted for 90 weeks if not for Rosella’s generosity, Reshma’s support, Sathish’s supervision, Guruswamy’s layouts and Amit’s illustrations. Don’t you think it’s time we thanked them publicly?

When Leaders Turn Journalists

Our leaders of today are either too tongue-tied or just-about-literate to tweet their thoughts in 140 characters. Thankfully the Men in Whites of the pre-independence era were very unlike these gotta-ask-the-high-command’s-permission-to-pee types.

The netas of yore were more educated (Dadabhai Naoroji was a Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy), erudite (Ambedkar wrote a thesis on Ancient Indian Commerce) eclectic (Aurobindo Ghosh knew Greek, Latin and Classical Sanskrit), fearless (Subhash Chandra Bose slapped his Professor for his Anti-India remarks) and forthcoming (Gandhiji never held back his views - be it on potty cleaning or proudly sporting the loincloth).

Quite a few of these gentlemen were gifted writers and fairly opinionated. So invariably they ended up founding newspapers, journals or periodicals to speak their mind. The names that they gave their journals make for interesting analysis. The character of the name strangely mirrors the character of the author!

The unorthodox and sharp Dr. Ambedkar chose the unconventional Mook Nayak (Leader of the Dumb) as the stand-out name for his weekly. He could have chosen something sober like Mute Voice, Silent Majority or Dalit Times. Instead he preferred the stick-out-like-a-sore-thumb strategy. Almost like his blue suit in a sea of khadi. In stark contrast, look at Gandhiji’s Harijan (God’s own people). It’s as lofty, religious and noble sounding as the ‘half-naked fakir’.

Aurobindo’s explanation for calling his periodical Arya is almost autobiographical: “Arya means an effort or an uprising and overcoming. The Aryan is he who strives and overcomes all outside him and within him that stands opposed to the human advance. Self-conquest is the first law of his nature.”

Tilak’s Kesari (Lion) is but a cryptic way of summating the audaciously proud braveheart inside Bal Gangadhar. While Nehru’s anglicised National Herald offers us a clue of how Jawaharlal perceived himself – as a harbinger of things to come.

Imagine if we apply this character-revealing-journal-names theory to today’s paradigm…then Advani will end up editing Wrath Yatra, Rahul will preside over Photo Op India, Yechuri should lord over Bleeding Red, Pranabda should start PC Fix and Manmohan would make the right publisher for Voiceless Voice.

The Animal Farmers

Darwin got it right. And women will vouch for it. Men are nothing more than glorified beasts. Because come hell or high water: we still hog like a pig, drink like a fish, multiply like rabbits, rat on each other, chicken-out under pressure, shed crocodile tears, parrot hackneyed lines, come up with hare-brained ideas, implement them with the stubbornness of a mule and get results that smell like a skunk!

The savage streak sums up the quintessence of man. That’s why the wise old Chinese chose 12 animals as their zodiac signs. Even the kings of the ancient times always had a marked preference for animals as their royal insignia. In Mahabharata, Duryodhana is said to have used a Cobra as his war flag. Likewise, the Cholas are famed for their Tiger symbol while the Pandians had a fetish for the Fish.

Some royal types took this brute fixation to the next logical step by appropriating an evocative cognomen. Eleventh century English Emperor Richard I booked his ticket to immortality by picking the name ‘Richard the Lionheart’. Cut to the year 1699. Guru Gobind fashioned a whole warrior-like Khalsa by making it mandatory for male followers of Sikhism to embed the surname ‘Singh’.

Over the years, the animal instinct has only become more explicit. Now celebrities have proudly started wearing their nicknames like a military decoration. The late Mansur Ali Khan Pataudi used his childhood sobriquet ‘Tiger’ as his calling card to roar his way into our national consciousness. Tiger Woods (born Eldrick Tont Woods) is a recent example of this name machoisation.

The recent trend to blend zoonyms (animal names) with human names is bound to catch on given our penchant for appearing manlier than we are. When Steven Demtre Georgiou was looking for a catchy stage name, he picked Cat Stevens. When Chris Carter was creating the character of a ‘smart FBI agent’ for X-Files, he settled for Fox Mulder.

Who knows, the success of zoonym-tinged names might embolden many more fathers to experiment with Hinglish creations as bizarre as Jaguar Jaishankar, Panther Parameswaran, Deer Damodaran, and Akash Cobra!

R Bole Toh Rockstar

The 18th letter of the English alphabet is a repository of more secrets than the CIA. It’s perhaps the most overlooked and under analysed subject of our times. The Japanese to this day, haven’t figured out how to utter it. Truckloads of speech therapists make truckloads of money in trying to cure Rhotacism (the technical term for imperfect pronunciation of the r-sound). Brand managers do everything in their means to acquire the ® symbol. And at least 50 countries have anchored their monetary fortunes to currencies that are in essence R-words (Rupee, Rupiah, Rouble, Riyal, Real, Ringgit & Renminbi)!

So what’s with ‘R’? Why does it dominate our lives? To get a definite answer, it’ll help to ask a few searching questions. What is the world’s most ancient text? Rig Veda. Who’s considered the father of the Egyptian gods? Ra. Who’s regarded as the Mother of Gods by the Greeks? Rhea. How have humans populated the Earth? Reproduction. How do we breathe? Respiration. What is the one faith that has been guiding billions of people over many millennia? Religion. What were rulers called in India? Rajas and Ranis. What do you call dramatic events that change the course of history? Revolutions. Which is the most popular form of government across the globe? Republic.

Some of you may be tempted to assume that I am selectively lining up words to get buy-ins for my theory that there’s something magical about ‘R’. The evidence that I am going to adduce further should hopefully seal the deal.

Which tennis player has won a record 16 Grand Slam titles? Roger Federer. Who was the first Indian to win two Oscars? Rahman. Who are the three greatest Brazilian footballers in recent times? Ronaldo, Rivaldo & Ronaldinho. Who is the superdupermegagigastar of Indian cinema? Rajinikant. Who was the first person to be named ‘Sexiest Man Alive’ twice by People Magazine? Richard Gere.

Add Rani Mukherjee, Rihanna, Rafael Nadal, Robert Plant, Roger Waters, Richard Feynmann, Ranbir Kapoor, Russell Crowe, Ratan Tata and Ridley Scott to the power-list above and you’ll understand why Revlon, Rolls Royce and Ralph Lauren are still rocking!

The Charm of 3 Letters.

Andhraites are the ultimate alchemists. They are in a forever quest to turn anything into gold. Be it coal, land, power, pickle or their sesquipedalian names. Observing the man in the white shirt, white pant and matching white shoes is the easiest way to sniff the next big thing in any domain. That’s exactly how, I figured why SRK likes to be called SRK. And believe it or not, it’s got everything to do with the mystical power of the Three Letter Abbreviation (TLA)!

Late Tamilian heartthrob MGR pithily summed up the potency of the TLA with the ‘Moonrezhuthil en moochirukkum, adhu mudindha pinaalum pechirukkum’ song in the movie Deiva Thai. The everlasting spell cast by his diminutive is proof of his theory that ‘3 letters have a life beyond life’.

Perhaps Franklin Delano Roosevelt was privy to this concealed truth when he decided to milk his initials ‘FDR’ in the 1936 Presidential Election. He gave his then Republican opponent Alf Landon, a shellacking, by trouncing him with the third highest margin in a hundred years!

This insight proved very useful for John F. Kennedy in the 1960 Election and no wonder he had no hesitation in switching to the more endearing ‘JFK’. His opponent Richard Milhous Nixon somehow failed to see the merit in deploying ‘RMN’ in his campaign. And may be that’s why he’s still seen as a joyless, frosty leader.

Chandrababu Naidu is guilty of committing the same error. Being the custodian of NTR’s party TDP (another three letter word), he chose to take the path less travelled. He chose to play up his full name. His opponent Y. Rajasekhara Reddy spotted the chink in Naidu’s armour and ambushed him in 2004 with YSR. The rest is itihaas.

So what’s with 3? Why are people increasingly opting for names like GMR, GVK, OLX, KKR, CSK & STR? Indian numerology offers a clue. ‘Three’ connotes planet Jupiter, the god of gods, and it stands for power, prosperity and prestige. Understandably, entities donning TLAs are cockier and are prone to mouthing the SRK punch line: Don ko pakadna mushkil hi nahin, namumkin hai!

Double Whammy With Triple X

Except for the likes of Rahul Gandhi and Rakhi Sawant, not many Indians lose sleep over their carefully-cultivated brand image. That’s why a lot of us still upload unphotoshopped, unflattering passport-size photographs with oily hair, untrimmed mousch, dishevelled shirt, plastic smile, yadda yadda yadda to matrimony sites. Looks like, we’ll have to drop our don’t-give-a-damn stance soon. Because come December 6th, the top level domain name XXX will go public.

If you’re wondering how that’s gonna affect you, consider this scenario: Let’s say you’re single and more-than-willing-to-mingle and your name is Beemboy Beemboy. For a moment, let’s also assume that you’re trying to charm a chick into saying ‘I do’. Just when you thought, you’ve impressed the girl with your hard-earned credentials and cheesy SMS-forwards, what if she decides to google you? And what if, horror of horrors, she discovers a porn site called BeemboyBeemboy.xxx? Won’t that be a big turn off?

That’s the worry, the honchos at ICM Registry, are hoping to ride on, to milk additional revenues from the .xxx domain name. Their game plan is simple. 69% of humanity wouldn’t enjoy the prospect of being perceived as porn stars. So people would pay anything to block the possibility of perverts abusing their names!

Tapping into this insight, ICM Registry has made an offer, no one can refuse: ‘Pay up $150 to $300 and we’ll ensure no one books YOURNAME.xxx.’ If you ignore this offer, you get jacked. If you take up the offer, you may have to cough up a few hundred bucks. Either way, the Triple X Company will guffaw all the way to the bank. And you will end up getting jibbed. Wicked trap for the aam aadmi. Wonderful business plan for a start up.

India isn’t aware of this double whammy yet. Ash wouldn’t want an AishwaryaRai.xxx right? Maya Memsaab would throw a fit if she sees Mayawati.xxx na? AnnaHazare.xxx would cause a national unrest, will it not? So my gut feel is a lot of Indians will opt for a Triple X. Even if 0.1% of our nation succumbs, ICM will pocket an orgasmic $150 Million for doing nothing!

How Tamas Became Thames.

The armchair is easily the most under-appreciated place in the world. If you ask me, I’d rate it on par with Archimedes’ bathtub, Krishna’s chariot, Newton’s Apple Tree and Siddhartha’s Bodhi.

It’s got that mystical, magical power to transform any occupant into an almost-credible theorist for a brief eternity of one minute. You hit upon the fanciest of ideas sitting there and the universe conspires to supply you with all the factoids to back your notions.

I discovered the power of the armchair recently when I was researching river names. I started with Thames in London. Many respectable and dubious sources have come to agree that the murky Thames could have flowed from the Proto-Celtic word Temeslos (meaning dark water). Now Temeslos seems like a step-brother of Latin Tamases and Sanskrit Tamas. That set me thinking. Are the Celts of Indian origin?

Take the word Druid (Celtic equivalent of the Brahmin class). It seems like a derivation from Deru (Sanskrit for tree) and Vid (knowledge). Thankfully renowned Celtic scholar Peter Berresford-Ellis shares the same view.

His extensive investigation of the similarities between the Ancient Indian and Irish tongues, points towards the possibility of a shared ancestry. For example, Budh is planet Mercury in both the lingos. The sun diety is Sulios which sounds very similar to Surya. Setu is the Sanskrit word for bridge/highway/path while Set is old Irish for road. Bhojan and fochan mean food. And Angar is Welsh for fire - doesn’t that ignite a very Hindi word in your mind?

See how our fluvial pursuits helped us meander into a large reservoir of evidence in support of our Everyone-Was-An-Indian-Once theory. That’s the beauty of the Armchair. It lets you leap into unexplored domains with just a springboard called hunch.

Let me give you one more nugget that should stir your imagination wild. Are you aware that, unknown to us, a 480-km river named Komati gushes through South Africa, Swaziland and Mozambique? What’s interesting is Komati translates to ‘cow’ in the Swazi language. Doesn’t that sound like the Sanskrit Gomati? Isn’t that a strong data point to prove that my armchair theory holds water?

The Noble Prize for Corruption

These are trying times for the truly corrupt. To fathom their angst, put yourself in their shiny black shoes.

For beating the system 6-0, 6-0, 6-0, no one applauds you the way they celebrate Roger Federer. For constructing a financial maze that would flummox any modern day Theseus, all you get is the label of a ‘crook’. For generating more wealth than any elected government, no honourable university is willing to give you an honorary doctorate. Ain’t this rank injustice?

We at Seriously Crazy Activist’s Movement (SCAM) think it’s a cause worth fighting for. We feel it’s time for a principled battle to win back the lost halo of the unscrupulous. To reclaim a life of dignity for the depraved and the debauched, we’re launching the Blackmark Awards. The Awards will be modelled on the Nobel Prize. Only the most deserving with an enviable track record of unquestionable dishonesty will be deemed worthy of a nomination.

There will be 5 categories in all: Category 1 is the Blackmark for Exemplary Craftsmanship in Yarn Spinning. William Miller, the New Yorker who claimed enough insider knowledge to deliver an astonishing ‘520% return on investments’ would have made a great nominee had he been an Indian. Category 2 is the Blackmark for Extraordinary Prowess in Process Lubrication. The real life Polyester ‘Guru’ with his penchant for sealed envelopes, fat suitcases, mystery gifts, surprise donations and paid vacations would be an automatic choice for the award. Alas he’s no more.

Category 3 is the Blackmark for Outstanding Expertise in Creative Accounting. People like Ramalinga Raju, who’s legendary for inventing fixed deposits worth 33 billion rupees, will be vying for this slot. Category 4 is the Blackmark for Unimpeachable Give & Take. Only parliamentarians, cabinet ministers, chief ministers, prime ministers and presidents with proven credentials in Generosity in Awarding Contracts to the Undeserving, will be eligible. Category 5 is the Blackmark for Innovative Interpretation of Rules. Awarded to meritorious bureaucrats and judges with the uncanny knack of envisioning loopholes for every clause in the book.

Entry forms can be obtained when you wire USD 100,000 to my Nigerian account. Interested?

That thingy with that name.

Some jerks revel in making everyone else feel inadequate. They seem to have the answers for everything ranging from, ‘what’s the colour of Lady Gaga’s armpit hair?’ to ‘why do Giraffes stand while sleeping?’ I have often wondered if there will ever be a day, when people-like-us will get a chance to outsmart these smart-asses. Ladies and gentlemen, that day has arrived.

I am about to let you in on my private collection of thingamajigs (unfamiliar terms for familiar things). Digest it, memorise it, unleash it on the Walking Wikipedias in your circle and watch that look-of-awe in their faces for one superficial second. When that ‘Gotcha Moment’ happens, don’t forget to thank me.

Nuff said. No more foreplay. Let’s get straight to the meat. Did you know that the cleft above the middle of the lips and below the nose is called Philtrum? Or for that matter the English equivalent for Mann Vasanai or Saundhi Mitti is Petrichor? If that had you flummoxed, I’ve got tonnes of Whatchamacallits (the name of a Hershey candy bar derived from ‘what you may call it’).

Here’s more: Ferrule is the metal band on a pencil that holds the eraser in place. It’s also the name for the metal tip on top of an umbrella. Diastema is the word for gap between the front teeth on the upper jaw. Achenes (pronounced a-keens) are the little seeds on the outside of the strawberry. The technical appellation for Cat’s Whiskers is Vibrissae. Grawlix is the ‘@#$%&!’ typographical string used for representing foul language. Bobeche is the drip catcher in your candle holder. Plungers are the two buttons on which a telephone receiver rests. And Keeper is the belt loop that secures the tip.

If the nerds you wish to ambush have read Danny Danziger’s book on everyday objects, then leave them speechless by quizzing them on Dactylonomy (counting numbers with fingers), Onycophagy (the habit of biting one’s nails) and Steatopygia (fat accumulation in the rear). When you’re done stupefying them, walk away into the sunset by announcing that the inability to find the right word is called Lethologica!

Straight from the horse's mouth

I’ve realised that city slickers are the real country brutes. We can’t tell a jackass from a jennett (female donkey). We wonder why cowboys don’t ride cows. We’re in a state of shock without electricity. We are tongue tied when we have to speak in the native language. We are like the proverbial frog-in-the-well hopping between office and home. Our daily vocabulary has 100 humble words. Our offline social circle consists of 5 friends, 6 relatives and 7 acquaintances. And whatever we know is just a regurgitation of whatever Google throws up.

How exactly did I figure this out? It all dawned upon me when I decided to pen a piece on horses. Two sentences into the article, I discerned that I knew zilch about them.

Honestly, I didn’t know the difference between a Foal (baby horse), Yearling (1 to 2 year old), Colt (under 4), Filly (female colt), Stallion (non-castrated male horse above 4), Mare (female stallion) and Gelding (castrated male horse). I wasn’t even aware that Ponies are stronger, sturdier, stockier equines with a height of 58 inches or below. I had no clue that horses cannot vomit or the fact that they drink around 40 litres of water, daily.

Thankfully, not everyone is a hoofus doofus like me. There are still a lot of big-city big shots who fathom the value a horse brings to the table. Barons like MAM Ramaswamy and Vijay Mallya, jockey for power annually by racing their steeds in Derbies.

There are a few other corporate knights who saddle up by bestowing their brands with names of champion horses. Rahul Bajaj was the first in India to have the horse-sense to christen his scooter as ‘Chetak’ (Maharaja Rana Pratap’s legendary warhorse).

Rahul was, perhaps, inspired by Frank Mars, the creator of the Snickers candy bar which was named after the Mars family’s favourite racehorse. Frank’s innovative naming technique might have also prompted George Smith to call his stick candy Lollipop (the horse he used to bet on). In 1964, Ford cantered along the same path with Mustang. I wonder why dark horse brands aren’t deploying this strategy anymore.

Digging into Name Archaeology

In ancient times, there was no Facebook, remember? So you never got updates like: ‘Dude, I just composed the Rig Veda!’ There was no Twitter either. Otherwise Sita would have surely tweeted: Saw Ravan. He is 10 times worse than the movie!

It was an unimaginable era without essential accoutrements like iPods, iPads, Google, Paper and Electricity. They didn’t even have a pen drive for god’s sake! No wonder, transfer of knowledge was the biggest challenge faced by prehistoric men and women.

The only lasting way to pass on culture and religion was by bequeathing names to things, rivers, hills, forests, villages, festivals, stars, gods, and people. That’s why names can serve as verbal fossils that can reveal the historic secrets of yore.

Let me demonstrate how by focusing on some fascinating toponyms (place names). Let’s begin with Europe’s second longest river – The Danube. I am kinda convinced that Danube must have derived its name from Danu, the Vedic goddess of primordial waters. I have reasons to believe so, as a lot of water bodies in Europe, seem to have a Sanskrit root. Caspian Sea for example, seems a phonetic offspring of Kashyapi Sagar.

Cut to Georgia in Eurasia. They have an Indian sounding plateau called Javakheti that is home to six alpine lakes. One of which is Paravani. Those who know their Hindu Mythology, may remember that Lord Karthikeya’s peacock is named Paravani!

Now jump to Ukraine. You’ll see many cities bearing very Indic names. The most striking one being Vysheneve - doesn’t that sound like Vaishnav? Shift focus to Latvia. The largest resort city there is Jurmala. 8 kilometers away is Sloka. Doesn’t that ring a bell? Zip over to Serbia. You’ll be shocked to know they have a town called Indija (pronounced India) that’s been in existence since 1496!

So what does all this tell-tale evidence amount to? Well, contrary to conventional wisdom, it looks like Europe owes its origins to Ancient Indians. And how did we arrive at this mother of an assertion? By just scratching the surface of name archaeology!

Conclusion: Know your names. Know your history.

Names, Shoots & Leaves

One of the most absurdly racist notions that many of us carry in our airheads is what I call The Chink Think. It’s a downright preposterous belief that has no goddamn basis. It goes like this: All Chinese Men in this considerably colossal cosmos look the same. Likewise, All Chinese Women look indistinguishably identical!

Can there be a more ludicrously ignoramus view? I mean, it’s like saying baseball and cricket are one and the same just because they involve a bat and a ball!

Such imbecilic constructs have been wafting around for centuries in the botanic world. Luckily along came Carl Linnaeus in the 1750s, and he put an end to this poppycock by introducing the concept of identifying, classifying, arranging and naming life forms. In one revolutionary swoop, he hit upon the idea of having binomial nomenclature (names with two words) for every blooming thing in this universe.

Thanks to his back-breaking work, today, we know that there are 10,000 species of grasses, 7000 varieties of apples, 200 types of roses and so on. We even know their Latin names. For example Aalu is Solanum Tuberosum, Gongura is Hibiscus Sabdarifa, Mulai Keerai is Amaranthus Spinosus and Jackfruit is Artocarpus Heterophyllus.

Carl’s fetish for naming flora gave birth to Botany. This in turn, set in motion a movement that has helped us identify nearly 10% of all creepy-crawlies in the world.

But Taxonomists are of the view that we’ve not even scratched the surface. There’s a hell a lot of nomenclaturing that needs to be done. If ‘We the People’ leave the job to do these boring white coats, we’ll end up making progress at the lethargic pace of an intoxicated slug.

In networked times like these, what we need is collective effort. The Guardian, licked this issue, by launching the ‘Name a Species’ contest. The results for 2011 are just out. One of the winners is a 12-year old girl, who’s just christened a lurid orange fungus as ‘Hotlips’. The new name has drawn a lot of attention to the otherwise overlooked species. Time we transplanted the contest to India?

The Bongs Want A New Name

My name starts with ‘A’. And I consider myself accursed. I am sure, everyone on the ‘A-List’ will wholeheartedly agree with me. We have reasons for our revulsion.

For starters, A-people can rarely bunk classes as our faces are as familiar as chalk to our professors during a roll call. Then there’s the problem of seating during exams. Thanks to the sheer misfortune of being alphabetically ahead of our mates, we are assigned tables right in front of the eagle-eyed, pokey-nosed invigilator. What that means is there is zero scope for copying. That explains why most A-club members are never A-graders in education, doesn’t it?

Now see my rant in the context of a piece of news that would have surely caught your roving eye. I am talking about West Bengal’s decision to opt for a name change. Their big gripe: During administrative meetings, their turn comes last as West Bengal starts with the letter ‘W’. Such a schoolboyish explanation proffered for a ponderous issue like renaming of a key State of India!

I can understand if the logic had been, “Look, West Bengal sucks because it gives the impression of being a counterpoint to East Bengal which has become Bangladesh.” Alas, all we got was this W-is-bad claptrap! Anyways, let’s search for possible alternatives as Mamta is on the verge of giving WB, a golden handshake.

Sondesh is the first name that strikes my lightning-starved head. It feels like that legendary milk sweet and is a derivation from Sonar (Bengali for golden) and Desh (country). A safer option could be Banga (what comes after Dravida and Utkala in our national anthem). But then it bears too much of a resemblance to Bangladesh. On second thoughts, perhaps just Bengal might actually work better than Banga.

If levity is required, there are plenty of choices: Hilsaland will whet the appetite of the fish-gorging vegetarians in Kolkata. Gangulistan will be a hit with everyone except SRK. And Netaji lovers will salute Bose-nia. But if the idea is to be on top of the Letter Ladder, then Amar Rashtra (Our Country) should earn a khoob bhalo!

Unknown inventors of known names.

In 1968, Andy Warhol is said to have famously tweeted that, “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes”. As I grew up waiting for my moment in the sun, I was shocked to read somewhere that the Department of Celebrityhood had pruned this figure to 15 seconds.

Just when I started auditioning for my share of the limelight, I discovered that stardom was now being rationed like Kalakand in Kalahandi. Yup, it was down to 3 goddamn seconds! By the time I make the Page 3 grade, I am sure even those fleeting temporal strands, would have gone with the wind.

BOTTOMLINE: If you’re ordinary like me, you have no chance of hitting the headlines. Unless of course, you get a big fat butt-implant like Kim Kardashian or dress up like Lady Gaga.

Since we’re incapable of being outrageous, what’s the way out for us Perpetually Anonymous Folks (PAFs)? The answer my friend, lies in kick starting a ‘You-scratch-my-back-I’ll-scratch-yours’ movement. Basically it involves making rank strangers famous and hoping that they return the compliment in kind.

Like my plan? Then let’s set the ball rolling by spreading the word about 3 ordinary people who deserve to escape anonymity. Kim Peterson is my Choice No.1. Nobody knows about this bloke. Or the fact that, he’s the guy who gave Accenture (derived from ‘Accent on the future’) its name.

Next up, is Milton Sirotta. As a 9-year old, he gave his mathematician uncle, Edward Kasner, a newly coined term to describe the largest known number in 1938. Milton called it Googol - which gave us Google! Mr. Sirotta is not the only unfortunate soul to have missed his date with glory.

Joan Coles is another example. When her boss Allen Lane was looking for a ‘dignified, yet flippant’ name for his publishing house, his secretary Ms. Coles mumbled, ‘Penguin’. Everybody knows Penguin today. Some may know even Allen Lane. But what about Joan Coles? Does she deserve her obscurity? If you think she deserves more, go make her popular. Who knows, your good karma, will earn you your three seconds of fame!

Birthing a New Improved Al-Qaeda

The Devil once had a diabolic idea: what if SATAN were to change his name to GOD, wear a virgin white robe, grow angelic wings, sport a saccharine smile, swear by the truth, grant wishes to the needy, publish a ‘Yes We Can’ manifesto, and deliver eloquent speeches…would he sweep the polls and rule the world?

After being bewitched by the thought, the King of Darkness junked the revolutionary re-branding exercise as it was fraught with the risks of copyright infringement and intellectual property violation. The last thing that the Devil wanted was to be hauled up by GOD for being a cheap knockoff!

Looks like Osama Bin Laden faced a similar dilemma in the fag end of his life. The only difference though was he badly wanted a name change for Al-Qaeda and not himself. Osama wanted to give Al-Qaeda a quiet makeover not because it had become famously infamous but because it didn’t sound sufficiently religious or jihadi.

That’s why he grappled with clunky alternatives such as Jama'at I'Adat al-Khilafat al-Rashida (Restoration of the Caliphate Group) and Taifat al-Tawhed Wal-Jihad (Monotheism & Jihad Group). Osama’s search for more meaningful options has spawned a whole new sub-genre of black humour tinged names that may be abhorred by the brand managers of the banned organization.

Readers of the Danger Room defense blog have been the first off the block to spew vitriol. Their suggestions vary from the machine-like Jihad-o-Matic, the movie-like League of Extraordinary Beards, the spoofy People for Extreme Terrorist Adventures (PETA), to the downright blasphemous Kandahar Ardent Brotherhood of Orthodox Muslims (KABOOM)!

Perhaps Al-Qaeda needs a more acceptable moniker to be deemed acceptable. In keeping with this brief, we have explored a few other ways of repositioning the terror movement. Here are the ones that made the cut: Slam Walequm may offer a civil yet violent nomenclature for jihadis to greet opposers of their ideology; Osamaritans can help appropriate the halo of do-gooders spreading the legacy of Bin Laden; and Bush Ambushers will present Al-Qaeda as a counterpoint for American fascism. Whatever the new name, it remains to be seen if Ayman Al-Zawahiri bites the bullet.

The Watch That Speaks Esperanto

Tick tock. Tick tock. Time’s running out for more than half of the world’s 7000 languages. Doomsdayers estimate that at least one of these dialects will go extinct every week. Experts attribute this phenomenon to the slow death of the indigenous tribes. The language Amurtag, for example, is said to have just 1 speaker now. And if an alien abducts this chap, our planet will be down to 6999 bhashas in a jiffy!

So who’s responsible for this linguistic holocaust? It’s not a Hitler by the name English. It’s not even globalisation. It’s bummers like us who have to be hauled up for The Case of the Vanishing Vernacular. If you want proof for your guilt, I shall stack them up one by one.

Did you know that the English language has over 500,000 words under its able command? The average bloke on the street uses less than 5000 words everyday! That’s a usage rate of just one percent.

Apply this 1% rule to Hindi, Tamil or Kannada and you’ll realise we waste away 99% of the words in the dictionary. What that means is we have no one else to blame for the silent necrosis of our sacred tongues.

Which is why, any movement to promote usage of new words or languages, should be actively lauded. One group of linguaphiles who’ve been at the forefront in fighting the ‘War against Poverty in Vocabulary’ are the unsung Brand Namers.

Thanks to them, the Average Joe knows exotic words like Ubuntu (Afrikaans for ‘humanity’), Hitachi (Japanese for ‘sunrise’), Samsung (Korean for ‘three stars’), Alta Vista (Spanish for ‘high view’) and Volvo (Latin for ‘I roll’).

Achilles Ditesheim, a Swiss Entrepreneur, deserves full credit for adding a dash of Esperanto to our lives. His move of choosing Movado (meaning ‘always in motion’) as the moniker for his luxury watch, paved the way for a bouquet of mellifluous Esperantist names from that company, including Amorosa, Eliro, Juro, Kara, Mezo, Saffiro and Vizio. Inspired by the acoustics of this universal language, a famed soft drink major christened its orange fizzy as Mirinda (means ‘wonderful’). They’ve never looked back ever since.