"Mark
was so fascinated by the dosa that he asked Lax for the
recipe. The evening got brighter when Shan narrated his
first experience with tahdoori chicken and ..." Make
no mistake - this isn't any narration by an Indian host
about her American friends who joined her dinner. She's
talking about her affiliate friends Marckanden, Laxmanan
and Sudarshan. Find it strange? Not if you live in the
US and move with fellow country men.
The names have shrunk, morphed, changed and what not.
Most of the times, its the more traditional names - those
of Gods that get short. Sometimes, they get so different
that you may never be able to guess or find the real name.
Take for instance Steve, the cab driver in Northern California.
Only he can tell the number of times his name 'Satveer'
got mispronounced. So can 'Bugsy' Bakulesh.
The subject has become so much fun that a magazine for
South Asians in the US published the 'Top 10 Nomenklatura'
- the top ten of the Anglicized Indian names. I myself
was flabbergasted when I discovered that the Kandy we
were expecting in a gathering was none other that our
next door neighbor Kandaswamy.
Take heart that not all these names are less intuitive.
Atleast the likes of 'Sandy' Santosh, 'Andy' Anand, 'Vishy'
Vishwanath do not baffle us as much.
Many of them attribute some reason for their new 'Nam'avatar
- the majority being, tired of hearing their name mispronounced,
time and again. Well, we can understand the agony Jagganathan
would have undergone facing the customer service telephone
operators before becoming 'Juggy'.
Some don't want to get alienated from their western colleagues
because of their assumed 'awfully odd long names.' Whatever
one attributes, these interesting names adds a little
curiosity. The next time somebody talks about introducing
you to one Mr.Malcolm, you may very well happen to meet
a Mahalingam.
Happy living!
'Jawah' Jawahar
