What's in a name?

Office is a space where you are supposed to be known by your real name, and never by your nick name. Nobody calls you Chintu, Mintu or Bablu at office but as soon as you step out of office you want to be called your swanky nick name leaving behind your outmoded name which perhaps your parents chose for you on consultation of many astrologers, pandits and a few overpriced books something titled like “An Encyclopedia of Indian names for your child”.

What’s in a name? A question that’s been asked ever since one bald man (They call him seks’sphere or something) put forth it to the world. Let’s justify it ! What if a guy named Padmalochan suddenly becomes blind — are you going to call him Andhalochan ? You can’t ! You at least need an affidavit, a newspaper ad, and of course a good amount of money to do all these. And you need to carry that proof throughout your life notwithstanding its having any great purpose . My wife is supposed to carry my surname, but I intentionally have avoided making it, coz she has to carry this proof which is again I am sure would be a piece of paper that she has to carry along with her certificates, passports, any piece of document which will bear her former name. And of course, while filling a visa form she can’t escape from a section titled “Have you ever been known by any other name?” !

In my work place, a product based company with too many number of products and different clients, you have got another surname, an addendum to the original one. And that second surname is nothing but the name of the product/client you are working with. Often at my work place, people are known less by their name and more by the team they are working with.

“Where can I find Mr. Sushant?”

“Hmm…Well there are two Sushants here, Do you know which team he works with?”

“I guess… SyncML”

“Oh.. SyncML Sushant.. must be that corner cubicle. Please check it out.”

So SyncML Susant! Sounds nice! ain’t it ? Often product or company names are decided just like we decide baby names — after a good amount of research, polls, feedbacks etc. So they ought to be nice names. When those nice names becomes suffix or prefix in your name you become a altogether different entity. When you have two people bearing same name, then it really helps in distinguishing them. Most of our names are very common — Srinivas, Manjunath, Mani, Kumar, Senthil, Suguna, Archana, to name a few. And Rakesh, Suresh, Mahesh, Ram, Hari are most common Indian names. You will surely find one of them in any organization.

A new GM in my company instructed management to put employee name in the respective cubicles so that the latency period becomes less! I am not sure how successful he was, but candidly speaking; product or team names really comforts the other person to identify—at least to me. Take for example, If I say Mahesh, two persons come to your mind. Gateway Mahesh or Testing Mahesh. You can discover so many people around you. Developer Suguna or Suguna from QC. Browser Kumar or Accounting Kumar, VijayLakshmi from Marketing or VijayLakshmi from TSG. HR Veena or Development Veena. And just think, how do you differentiate two Manis from same dept?. Well, you still have good options. Customization Mani or Core Mani ? Of course, it eases your trouble when you have more than two persons in the same name. Take that — Marketing Naveen, TTPCom Naveen , SmartPhone Naveen. Whom do you want to meet ?

The naming rule is very simple. If two persons are from different dept, then they are known by their departments. If both from the same dept, then they are known by their teams. What if both are from one team, then by their actual surnames. Now what you are going to do, if even their surnames match. Well, you decide? You are the best to judge at that point of time.

Unless you have got a unique name/surname say for example, Shaddhaksharaya, Zunder, Lumitaswa — the product/team name is the second surname for you. But don’t let down yourself for not having a very unique name. In a perfect team work, you are known by your product, and never the product is known by your name. Just think, you are part of a great product or a great team. There’s a little bit of ‘you’ in that. That’s your best identity in a working place. That’s a supplement pride you carry along with that of your native and family.

~Swarup

Depth

There is so much depth
in our love
that, in the darkness -
even if we do not hold our hands
it will do.

There is so much depth
in our love
that, even if we do not love
it will do.


- This poem was told to me by my friend Zeetoo during my college days. Heard once, remembered forever ..

~Swarup

Mungaaru Male (First Rain)

It takes 110 days in theatre for a kannada movie to be watched by a non-kannadiga guy like me. Its not that all my kannada friends vouched for the movie ( for the first time in four years of my staying in Bangalore), its the soul-stirring songs that took me to watch Mungaaru Male. Well, watching such a nice movie in a saturday evening with a Rs. 30/- balcony ticket in a non-AC-but-DTS theatre was altogether a different kind of experience. Of course a magical one.

Not everytime you watch a good movie! This movie, I would say a great movie. A gently crafted piece of work, with sheer brilliant execution by actors, director, cinematographer and above all the music director. Sonu Nigam should think himself lucky enough to sing such an ecstatic song. Mungaru Male was all about defying boundaries. Boundaries that exist within ourselves, boundaries that created kannadigas and non-kannadigas, boundaries that defines how to distinguish between good and bad films. It crossed all boundaries but it didn’t dare to touch the boundaries created by the family that separates the protagonists of the movies Preetam and Nandini. A very usual love story — boy sees girl, love at first sight, a hooligan pursuing the heroine and our karate master hero doing everything for the sake of love blah blah blah..

Expressionism at its best, the movie tries to depict the true character of our Indian looking, tough but yet soft at heart young man. You don’t need a deadening shahrukh to cry in a sheep-ish voice to limn pain ! Our local hard drinking guy delivers far better. You need not understand kannada to understand this kannada movie. A little rabbit Devdasa who symbolizes the immortal concept of love in the movie tells you the story. Not many times you find symbolism finding its way to filmdom.

For the two and half hours, the movie was extra ordinary and rhapsodic. But last two and half minutes of the movie will stir your soul, will make you somber. Suddenly you’ll cry for you'll find yourself hard trying substituting in place of Preetam, when he was burying Devdasa wrapped with jasmine petals at one high point on earth where it all started.

Love.

Land of sorrows,
Ocean of tears,
Valley of truth,
End of life.

Did our Preetam knew it before falling (he falls into a gutter at the first sight) ? Why on earth Nandinis do not understand Preetams ? (Or do female understand male beyond male understanding female ?) Everybody loves a love story, but why nobody loves lovers ? Why they couldn’t meet at the end ? Is sacrifice — the highest form of love ? If yes, what love tries to achieve? If no, then what love will achieve ? Elton John puts it; and its no sacrifice/Just a simple word/Its two hearts living/In two separate worlds/But its no sacrifice/No sacrifice/Its no sacrifice at all/Mutual misunderstanding/After the fact/Sensitivity builds a prison/In the final act.

But why love never reach its end ? Why great lovers on earth have never met ? Famous oriya poet Ramakant Rath answers this phenomenon in his book Sreeradha — “once you achieve success, that becomes the end of your desire, after that nothing remains like love, you will feel empty within, coz the cause that drives you to this point no more exists and you will fail to imagine your success minus that cause”. Hence, true love is all about the passion unadulterated by the desire of success. The moment you realize that, you opt for sacrifice. Mungaru Male tells at the end — Preeti Madhura, Tyaga Amara. Love is sweet, but sacrifice — immortal. But not everybody love to sacrifice for love.

Heart strings playing on the wind
In the first rain of Madikeri
Heart beats — dreams
Heart breaks — wounds
Love just have to be.


Haage summane.

~Swarup

N-Series mobile, Nabarangpur and Me

What determines the economic strength of a nation ? Well an economist will tell you the right answer. Often it's determined by the GDP. To the contrary, for a weird techie like me, its not the GDP but the the number of N-series mobile that the countrymen use!

There's nothing to be astonished about. Come to my native hometown, Nabarangpur, a district head quarter with roughly 50K odd population with the poorest of the world living there and I will show you auto-rickshaw drivers using N-series mobiles. How they click pictures, and take the memory card to the photo developer studio to take a print out. All in five minutes.

When I purchased a Samsung C100 mobile in Bangalore way back in early 2004, there was no mobile network setup in my hometown. When I carried mobile there, it was a piece of attraction it moved from hand to hand to make them understand how a mobile looks like. With no network out there, it just helped them felt that mobile is not a phone, but a video game, a kind of music player and just a calculator ! Today I do not carry my mobile in my hometown, not to mention - to avoid embarrassments from almost everybody - my friends, the shopkeepers, even my sisters and in-laws.

Globalization has done at least one good thing in India, it has given junks ( sorry joonks ) like me money, and others the business. The so called feel good factor is all about packed wallets and nothing else. And when you get more than you can spend, obviously and often you find yourself using a N-Series mobile.

My sister is in trouble, for she is quite apprehended about that ubiquitous demand ( a N Series mobile ) from her daughter Jolly. Peer pressure what you call it. Jolly's friends have already started using it, and poor Jolly still talks with a Nokia 2600. When they purchased that mobile, they asked me because they know that I work in mobile domain. I advised them to go for a Nokia 1100 or 3315. Not to my surprise, my suggestion was turned down with a “cheeeeee...”. Black and white mobile. ?? who use that in Nabarangpur anyway ? Since then I have never been able to convince them that even my company directors use those phones and we have only four to five N-Series mobiles in our office!

My native town suffers with one more problem. The problem is that everybody knows everybody. If you wish to, I am sure, you'll be able to know the dish that got cooked at my home day before yesterday. Do I complain.. ? No. Whenever I call my friends, following are the few questions I always ask:

Who's having affair with whom ?
Who eloped with whom ?
Who died recently ?

Genes. I can't help !

Am I unhappy with the changing scenario ? Again No ! Whenever I see somebody using those gadgets, it gives a sense of pride, it gives me a immense confidence in my countrymen who prosper in spite of poor statistics of health, education, child-mortality rates, dowry deaths. I salute them, for they know how to live the life every moment. They dont have the money, but they know how to spend. I have the money but I dont know how to spend !

~Swarup