The most prized and personal possession one has is — his/her name. If that name gets gored, mutilated or tarnished you can imagine the plight of that person. “That person” here is yours truly.
No,no, no don’t jump to conclusions that my reputation, character or stature has been tarnished . What I mean is literal mutilation of my name. Let me share my sob story:
Most people call me Bala, fine, a logical short form of my name, am happy with it. However when a known person who calls me Bala introduces me to a third person, many a time it goes like this “ Meet my friend Bala … Balasubramanian”. The more common Balasubramanian slips in and my hackles go up as I say in a firm tone “ Balasundaram, it is”.
When it comes to writing my name, there is a literal bloodbath. Some miss the “A” after the “L” making it Balsundaram. There is another breed which gets this right but misses the “A” after the “D” and describes me as Balasundram. Either way, my name sounds like an adjective for a Ball or a Drum.
How lovingly my parents would have named me? If this trend continues, they would descend on earth again and whack the living daylights out of the persons mutilating their little baby’s name. BEWARE!
Strangely enough, when corresponding with business associates abroad, be they in the US, Europe, South-East Asia or China, there never has been a single instance when my name had been misspelt.Does this mean that our levels of English spellings and pronunciation is inferior ? Does it mean that foreigners relate to Indian names better? Or does it simply mean that we care two hoots about how we spell names?
If I have a problem with people, both known and strangers missing a letter or two from my name, one of my bosses of yesteryears suffered the generosity of people adding an extra letter to his name. His name – Subhas Sircar and invariably his name was spelt as Subhash Sircar. He used to instantly reprimand people saying it is “ Subhas, Subhas” and am sure continues doing so even today.
Instead of trying to get people to spell my name correctly, I’m wondering if I should resort to Whatsapp methodology to spell my name …… without vowels.
So yours truly will become Blsndrm. Sounds yucky, but misspelling is yuckier.
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