Name and nicknames

I was born twelve and a half pounds and drank half a kilo of cow's milk, unwatered of course because I wouldn't stop bawling like a famished banshee and my poor mother wasn't able to feed me yet. 

Mummy describes my features as - "You were so fat you didn't have any features on your face. Two tiny holes for a nose. One slightly bigger hole for a mouth which constantly howled and ate. And two thin slits for eyes. So all in all it was a sphere with a few holes thrown in. All the Doctors came to see the fattest baby ever born in the Municipal Hospital in Muzaffernagar." Yes, I've always been a bit of a freak show.

But I digress from the title of this post. I was named Dimple, not because I had an actual dimple but after Dimple Kapadia who made her debut in the film Bobby with Rishi Kapoor. One of my parents must have liked her and found the name cute, but their parental instincts were bang on because dutifully in my teenage a little dimple appeared on my right cheek and stayed there. 

So for four years I only had that name but then I had to be put in school and another more 'formal' and 'appropriate' name had to be found. They settled on Parul and I'm a hundred percent certain they had no idea what my name actually meant. I guess it sounded right and appropriate and formal enough. Almost fourteen years later I joined the esteemed National Institute of Design as a "Facchad" or Fresher. One after another senior asked me what my name meant. I faintly remembered someone once saying it meant 'beautiful' so I hesitated and blurted that out many times. Of course it doesn't mean beautiful. It means graceful which is kinda the same thing but not quite. It is in fact the name of a flower in that picture up there. I've seen a lot of yellow flowers exactly like that in Dubai and frankly I like them better. Yesterday I googled Parul and found the below on Wikipedia. 

"Parul is a five-petaled flower known for its beauty. The name also appears in the Bengali folk tale Saat Bhai Champa. In the tale, a king has seven sons and one daughter. Towards the end of the story the children turn into flowers. The daughter was the flower "Parul". The story and the flower Parul also feature in Rabindranath Tagore's Rabindra sangeet. The folk tale is called Seven Champa Brothers and One Sister Parul. Parul means graceful. In the Sanskrit language "Parul" means 'A cute nature girl' aka Dr. Parul Kakar. The linguistic origins of the name are uncertain—some claim it is Sanskrit. More typically it is assumed to be of Bengali origin."

'A cute nature girl'? No. I think that's just Dr. Parul Kakar assuming she's cute.

 As the Bangla folktale goes a king had three queens and no children.  A "Sadhu" (ascetic) gave him three magical mangoes and only the youngest queen had complete faith in the magic. While the two queens remained childless despite eating the mangoes, the youngest gave birth to a whopping seven little boys. The jealous queens buried all of them in the royal garden. The eighth child, a little girl was born a little later and the maid took her away before a certain live burial. The little girl Parul grew up in the forest and eventually avenged her brothers and brought them back to human form from the flowers they had become where they were buried.

Now, that little tale made me smile. More power to little girls who grow up to be powerful avenging angels! While I was in Ahmedabad I heard my name called out many times and when I looked around, more often than not there was a harried parent running after a little girl wandering around oblivious of the dangers of being a little girl in the big bad world all on her own. Parul is a very popular Gujrati name and I hope all those little Paruls grew up to be powerful women. Some of my Bengali friends know and can sing that song in the folk tale in which my name is mentioned. Even my mum in law can sing that song! 

It is traditional in Bengali families to give a child a 'Bhalo naam' or formal name and a 'Daak naam' name or a nickname. People don't do that a lot these days but I think it would be nice if they did. So, I have an actress's name and a Bengali or Gujrati name but I'm none of those things and yet they both somehow make sense.

Over the years I've been given many nicknames for various reasons and I thought it would be fun to put them all down.

My mom has called me Dabba(box) and Dabbi(little box) and Rasmalai, Balushahi, Rasgulla (Indian dessert) at different points in time because I think she saw me collecting coins in matchboxes and because she thought I was sweet. Well, thanks mother I'm diabetic now and I still collect things and boxes and things in boxes.

My father affectionately calls me 'Kutteyyy' still. So, basically his way of expressing affection is calling me 'dog'. But it's the way he says it. I mean I call my French Bulldog Pablo 'Pig'. But it's the way I say it. Plus Pablo in fact has a pig's soul.

My father has three best friends from his college days. I call them Jaggi, Raju and Lambu chacha ( that's not his real name. He is 6ft 3in tall). Jaggi chacha used to call me 'Dushtani' (loosely translated - 'naughty girl') just so I'd complain to my mother,"Mummy, Chacha 'Duthani' keh raha hai!!" and everyone would laugh so he said it a lot.

No one gave me any nicknames in school although I was often called Gahlot because I was in the same class with Parul Sahai. Goes without saying that we always call each other by Surname to this day. We sat together for a whole year in 10th standard and our Mathematics teacher Mr Mudassar, a really really sweet and a really really patient man with a lisp would invariably call out,"PAUUL!!" and we would get interrupted during some inane and yet inexplicably crucial conversation we were having and say in unison"YES, SIR!" He would then specify the Surname which was invariably Gahlot. Sahai was a very diligent student. She was very good at numbers. I, on the other hand threw away my Math textbook with glee at the end of final exams every year. I scored a glorious 52/100 in the 10th Board exams. You cannot even imagine the extent of my joy at that number 52. I seriously couldn't bring myself to genuinely care about X or Y. And I have zero memory of what I scored in all other subjects. That's genuine hate.

And then came NID and the nicknames pretty much kept flowing all through the years I spent there. I'm just going to number them because there are too many.

1. Feedback Polly ~ Shaz Ahmed or Kaushik Sarkar or both from my batch came up with that name because I had this habit of going to everyone's table and saying something or the other about whatever they were working on. I think it must have been really annoying for my batch mates who had to put up with unsolicited feedback, hence the nickname. It used to upset me a lot back then but now I think it's so funny. I would love to officially apologise to the batch of '93 but of course I won't.

2. Parules and regulations, Foot rule, Ruler ~ Tarundeep Girdher my senior called me all of that because he is a really funny guy like almost all Libra men I know. His birthday must be around the corner.

3. Rul ~ Rajib Ghosh called me that because he was always too busy working to pronounce my whole name. Now he is busy being a big shot at Microsoft and I'm still Rul. The bugger won't even bother writing a capital R so it's just rul. Damn you, Gajib Rosh!

4. Prool ~ Most of my batch mates still call me that. I think it's just easier to pronounce and it's fun yelling,"PROOOOL!!!"

5. Drac ~ My roommate for two years Shailaja Shah still calls me that. Drac is short for Dracula. I have irregular front teeth reminiscent of the fictional vampire. I have always liked my irregular teeth as they are and the thought of having them corrected never crossed my mind. My mother thought so too and despite many suggestions to the contrary from people over the years fortunately she let me have my original Dracula teeth for life.

6. Fila ~ Ripul Kumar, my senior and overall terribly nice guy still calls me that because I had two Fila sweatshirts that I absolutely loved and spent most of my winters in. He was in the photography club and enlarged a picture of me in the dark room because I pestered him incessantly. I was not in the club and even though I knew the basics of developing black and white film, I would have definitely messed up even if I could sneak into the dark room which was kept padlocked. So, he did make that print. I still have it. Thank you, Rips!

7. Pearl, Desert rose ~ Deborah Zama calls me that. Mostly because Pearl sounds like Parul, not because I'm some fresh water pearl. And desert is where I live now. Rose because Debbie is a sweetheart and I don't ever remember her saying a single mean word about anyone. She's just that nice. And everyone's heard Sting's 'Desert rose'. I should find that on YouTube and listen to it.

8. Shakkarparul ~ I'm not allowed to reveal anything about this person because he/she is an intensely private person and I don't want to lose a very dear friend. All I can say is it's a South Indian who loves Shakkarparas a North Indian sweet which came up in conversation and now I'm Shakkarparul. This has to be one of my favourite nicknames though.

9. Pa ~ Amit Rastogi, the man responsible for helping a lot of us NIDians make some easy moolah selling Cellforce cellphones on the streets of Ahmedabad calls me that because unlike my friend Rajib Ghosh he is too lazy to pronounce the rul.

10. P ~ This isn't a nickname but a lot of people do this especially when they are texting. I don't know why but I really wish they wouldn't. I mean take a cue from the busy Rajib or the lazy Amit and just call me Pa or rul. Parul is still the best option though. And P sounds like Pee and no one wants to be called a body fluid. I mean imagine if suddenly one day I started calling you 'sweat' or 'spit' or 'blood' or 'semen'? 

That ends the college years.

Now moving on to the Anshuman. He has a lot of nicknames he uses for me including Kaaloo, Daantu, Little Baby Babaghanoush (his favourite), Parulena (my favourite), Bhaloo (Not my favourite). I must share the story of how Anshuman got his name. His parents took him to school and told the teacher his name was Abhishek. "No, it is Anshuman Gaikumar (Anshuman Gaikwad, the famous cricketer)" So, he named himself in true Aries style.

My friend Kuntal Bhogilal used to call me Bulbul. I had forgotten all about it but then my bro in law Mukul recently reminded me and inspired this post. Apparently Kuntal called me that because of my high decible phone voice. I still have a high decible phone voice. How else would anyone know how happy I am to talk to them. I like Bulbuls. There are two that come to the garden everyday and the only ones intelligent enough to know that there's food in the bird feeder. Sparrows are rather daft.

Anshuman's first cousin and my close long distance friend calls me Turtle for obvious reasons. I'm slow and sometimes I prefer to hide rather than have actual conversations with people.

And the last is Athene. My ICQ chat name was Athene, my favourite Greek Goddess. She is the Goddess of war, wisdom and skill who aids and inspires Odysseus in battle. She appears in his dreams and sometimes disguises herself at crucial moments when he needs her help. Athene is my role model. Of course I have zero attributes that she does. But hey a woman can dream! And you! Yes, you millennial! ICQ was a chat software in the Nineties! And read Odyssey!