The NameCase

Howdy...

Now that I've used this blog long enough as my written memoir on life, the time has come for us to break the line and talk about something else. I'm going to name certain people in life who're close to me, and since they are so many of them around with this singular but angularly triangular trait (don't even wonder/ponder/go yonder on this past line).

I'm surrounded by people with misspelled names. I know you can derive names from any language/object/god/animal/inanimate things/places and objects. You've got Lara Dutta who isn't named after the famous Cricketer since they are almost contemporaries but after a song called Lara's theme. And so on and so forth. The reason I found this topic interesting enough to write will be revealed in due time. For now, just be on the ride.

Most of these names are just spelling juggernauts that went a little awry somewhere down the line, while these people were little kids, or something more reasonable, the piece de resistance however, is a work of art. My bestest friend is named Ratika, a vowel interchange that sets her apart from everyone else. In fact, the vowel is what all of them have changed all over the place. I know a Reetieka as well, so there's an overabundance of eee's (That's the sound that came from me, as soon as I spent more than 3 minutes around her), Shriddha, one of my favorite officemates is another example in case. There's Renu who doesn't like her own name so everyone calls her Rain, but she's so sweet this doesn't cause anyone any pain. (For the poetic self was this last line administered, the broken, punctuated writing of mine doesn't offer much rhythm and rhyme, you see)

Now, to the piece de resistance, I acquired a cousin through a marriage in the family, she's the daughter of the family my cousin was married into. And her name's Navita. (The family's pretty close to me, and I'm writing this just after having spent the night chatting up her brother all night long on the future of organised retail in India) Now, I'd heard Namita, Vanita and Kavita, and this name, as it sounded adequately North Indian, bowled me over. Since I pride myself narcistically over my command of the shudh Hindi language, I couldn't fathom the meaning of this one. It didn't sound like one of those archaic hindi names like Manyata, Maanit, Vishesh (I know all these people and they know me, some recently, some from years back). So I was curious, and I decided to kill the cat at the oppurtune moment, almost right at the altar of her marriage.

Just half an hour before she was to enter the pandal for her marriage, I posed my seemingly benign query to her. And out came the most intriguing happenings in this world that I'd heard of. Up until she reached Class Xth at the age of 15, she was known as Namita. She passed her Class Xth with lavitating colors and soon was to receive her passing certificate and marksheet.

They both arrived in due time, Crisp as ATM-delivered Money notes and finally, she was a confirmed Xth pass Gal. Wow! This story is exciting, isn't it. (Go on, grind your teeth, its good for your digestion) :-P

Now, the issue was, she received her passing certificate, and it had a typo. As lcuk wolud hvae it, her nmae was misseplled in the cerfiticate. Just the way you understood the last sentence, the family did too. And then, ingenuity struck. Instead of getting the typo edited and a new certificate made, the family decided to call her Navita.

After 15 years of developing herself as Namita the me, Namita the myself, she had been destined to lead her life with a V for victorinox cutting her name in half inverse.

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What's in a Name, said Shakespeare... Navita will never get to know, she had it altered off a Keyboard Typo.
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Navita doesn't have a meaning for all that I know. It doesn't create a question in anyone's mind, since our environment-friendly junta can overcome all difficult names by dabbling them with familiar sounding names, so she passes off as Namita most of the time. Imagine that, a typo changing your life. You don't have to give an advert in the classifieds to notify that you've changed your name, you don't have to nothing else, you just get yourself a new name. At the threshold of teenage, angst, joy, dreams, erudition, loquaciousness, you have a new moniker to define, deign and mollify yourself with. One that you didn't earn yourself, but was given to you off the farsightedness of a U.P. Education Board Babu based in Bareilly, who thought that you'd fare well in life with the Victorinox diversion.

Thank god also, for she has a nick name that isn't as nicked and defiled as her good name. Its Jimmy, that's what everyone calls her, her mom with a tinny twang, and her bhabhi with a condimental sweetness, and me with a canine-loving drawl, all beckoning the same, one and only Navita.

Thank god my parents decided to drop off my nick-name for my good name all those years ago. I wouldn't respond or correspond to it at this day and age. And NO, I'm not telling it to you.

She's happily married, and juggling her life between self-administered anorexia and a doctorate in Naturopathy. Don't raise your brows if you see me running me with my cousin behind me with a Enema Tube, bag and barium solution et al in her hands, chasing me down the road for using and gesticulating on her name, just to feed my creativity and your voyeuritic desires of the literary kind.

My use of parenthesis in this post is only due to my recent way of living life, where I do unjust things to myself and others near and dear to me, and then justify it by inner turmoil and juxtaposition of values and relative action. (Which will end post this last word)

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This is from her wedding. My all-encompassing grin is thinking of the post you just went through. Now, please press Alt+Tab twice.