What is in a name???

My name is Balakrishnan Ramachandran (and no Marw I’m not putting my full name here to increase the hits on me from Google ;-). Over the past 25 yrs or so since I’ve groped reality, my name has been raped to good effect. It started off with people calling me Bala (fair enough). It’s probably the most clichéd nick to any loser by the name of Balasubramanian or Balachandran or Balamurthy. As friends reached puberty, it gave them enormous thrill to tweak Bala to something lewd – Balls. Most of my childhood I lived with being called Balls except in one case where an idiot who for some reason started calling me ‘Bullock’.

I kinda liked it in a way…Balls sounded too cool till I arrived at UMBC and met a bhaiyya from the deep ravines of Bihar. Having failed in English a zillion times in high school, he didn’t understand the subtle nuances of a prefixes or past participles…Balls became ‘Ball’ and eventually in his native earthy Bihari translation became ‘Gota’. I sighed and accepted it thinking its one of kind from a person who is one of a kind too! How naïve was I!!! Whilst working at LCS, a Russian lady (reiterate it’s LADY not a girl…desp MOFOs) asked me my name. I sensed trouble but still held my breath (which was stinking anyways) to utter : B A L A. She shot back : How do you spell that “B A L L” ? We all know that the Russian alphabets are more or less mirror images of the English letters but this was just sodomy! I decided not to kill her thinking about her hungry relatives in Siberia.

Another person who has raped my name time and time again is my dear friend my Rupil Sant. He is one of those hard core Wren and Martin lovers who is fascinated by adverbs so much that every sentence of his has to have one (many a times a lot) ADVERB atleast. “Pathan kya fantastically bowling daala re….brilliantly daandi nikala maadarchod ka….level dekh re…GODLY hai”….so there you go. He had to contort my name into an “adverbly” name and thus….Ball became Bally. To add more misery he turned me into half Cantonese…Ballee. And to top it off and add Tata Namak to my carcass, he wrote a song-

Kissi Shayar ki Ghazal…BALEE
Kisi Jheel ka kamal…BALEE
Kahin to milega…Kabhi to milega
Aaj nahin to kal…BALEE

My dad doesn’t know of this…else he would die the most painful of deaths.

Apart from this, hordes of 'insignificants' have molested my name time and again.

Office - There is this Redneck accountant who calls me ‘Beala’, and Chinku who calls me ‘Bowla’ and a Sindhi wannabe white who calls me ‘Bayllah’.
Out side of Office - Dr. Phatak used to call me by my email address 'balakri' and one smart ass named Mahesh remixed that too to call me 'balki' on the cricket field.
I’m not sure if you guys have ever heard about a show on Animal planet called ‘The most Exxtreme’ where they rank animals according to most ferocious, protective, caring, predator etc. If there ever was to be a show “The most Exxtreme” name rapes, you sure do know who the winner would be!

Well the reason I started to write this blog (other than to make my boss think im really working) was another case of name molestation that happened today morning. I had to visit an eye doctor to replenish my contact lens quota. I filled out the application form and handed it out to the doctor who just screamed after looking at my name – “Holy Smoke!!! How in God’s holy name do you say that??” I condescendingly said – “Just call me Bala”. She still was pretty shell shocked as to how long my name was and quipped – “No offence meant but the entire thesaurus is in there.” I smiled wryly (yep another adverb ;-) and said “I don’t quite think so unless the Thesaurus is just 24 letters."She took notice that I wasn’t too impressed and pressed on to say – “Well in that case I’m just going to call you Bala24”

So there you go folks…another feather to my dad’s cap for making my life miserable. I’ve faced so much misery and ignominy regarding my name that it just doesn’t bother me anymore. But I’ve decided that I’m not going to make my sons life miserable. He would have a short name which nobody would be able to fuck around with….he would live happily ever after….I’m would name him Vekantachalapathi Balakrishnan.

Immigrant !!!

This is a collection of events which has occurred with my friend Bhaiyya. Bhaiyya commands such respect in the country now, that he is considered a naturalized citizen rather than a non-immigrant.

Bhaiyya, comes from the same location, where Nalanda University existed in ancient times or where Laloo rules now. IIT educated Bhaiyya is a typical Indian. He has black hair, brown skin and Hindi which will put guys like me from Mumbai to think if its a foreign language. His English language is accented.

So our story starts at the beginning of this year, when Bhaiyya was searching for a new apartment to stay. He wanted to move to a new apartment after Mike left for the west coast and his inability to get a roommate for a 3BHK apartment was turning out to be a costly affair.

Bhaiyya was visiting a lot of rental places to enquire about rates and see apartments for himself. However, his applications are rejected by Rental agencies for "Having too high an income". Yes, dear readers, I was also surprised to hear of that being one of reasons to get rejected. Now, he is tired after a month long search accentuated by the rejections, strikes up a conversation with a random white guy at the gas station. They talk about different locations where apartments would be available and Bhaiyya discovers that some of them maybe available. However, the guy tries to warn him with good intentions, those areas contain a lot of foreigners, Asians and Indians. Imagine a white guy warning Bhaiyya about Asians ... Well Bhaiyya thought maybe he was considered a white. We said, maybe you are black.

This long weekend, we went to Raleigh, NC. Since we were 4 of us, we decided on travelling luxuriously in a big car. However, we got Nissan Sentra .. the smallest possible. More to our surprise, we saw that the car doesnt make 65mph without flooring the accelarator for more than 5 minutes. However, our dear Bhaiyya in a near stroke of genius while returning back, makes higher 70's for couple of minutes before climbing down. By the time car is back to speed limit, we pass an unmarked stationary cop car. The cop flashes its lights and asks us to get off the road. Resultant, Bhaiyya gets a speeding ticket at 78mph. However, after the initial tense situation of the cop and ticket, on our way back Bhaiyya discovers that the ticket has been marked as Caucasian White. Bhaiyya was now a White brother.

These incidents have emboldened Bhaiyya to consider himself a citizen. Infact, at a 3 way stop, near my school, which is a little wierd, the right turn does not need to stop, while all others are required to stop. Even the ones going straight are required to stop. So this guy who is from a different country stops, waiting for Bhaiyya to proceed. Bhaiyya waves him to go and then turns and tells me "Immigrants I tell you" !!!!

Note: Some actual events and related sequences have been modified for this article.