What's in a name!

About this time last year, I was 32 weeks pregnant and we hadn't shortlisted names for the baby. All along pregnancy I refered to him/her as 'Bebloo' and it just stuck on. She was born on 27th February 2010, and we din't have a name for her at birth. Since the office of birth registrations here in the UK, mandate that you register the baby within 42 days of birth, we came up with a name that we thought we really liked and I remember running to the office on the 42nd day and registered her as 'Ashima'. Even while I was walking back from the office I repeated the name in my mind and felt that doesnt sound like her at all! We have no clue what happened after all the searching and finalizing we had done....we just dint seem to think 'Ashima' suited her! :)
The registrar had jokingly said 'you can change your mind within a year and it will be just a small adminstrative hassle if you want to change her name'. I took her up on that casual comment! We actually decided to change her name... In the 11th month 24 days before the deadline, we were struggling with the name again. If it was possible, we would have slept over it till the 26th of February...but apparently we have to get her passport made by the 27th...so we just had to close the name this week!

I took the appointment for 10am on 3rd February. Ever since I took the appt a week back, I asked everyone I interacted with in the last one week about names. My mail box was flooded with names...from all over..Was up till late on the 2nd, talking about names and we chose 'Anshruta'. Everything was fine and decided till 3rd morning. We wake up and I start referring to Bebloo as 'Anshruta'...the 11 month old ignores...as if to say 'u should have started 11 months back...now I am used to 'Bebloo'...dont expect me to turn back and look at every wrd u keep mumbling'!
I call up my parents and they say 'we liked 'anahita'...call up a few more friends and get some 3-4 more opinions! Finally we think 'maybe anahita is better'. I am a Libran. You should expect me to find decision making difficult! :)
Its 8am and I have just about 2 hours to go for the appointment. The nanny comes home and sees Dips and me still talking about names and tossing ideas around. She smiles and shares a joke with Bebloo saying 'your parents are fighting over your name!' Bebloo seemed very amused and seems to say 'ok..whtever..make sure I get my breakfast on time'.
Then I run behind her calling her 'Anahita' and this time she ignores even more..I almost thought I saw a smirk on her face which said 'Can you make up your mind mommie?'

Dips gets all ready to leave for work by 8..and then he just googles 'Anahita' and comes and tells me 'you know what? Its a persian word..probably not a word from Indian origin'...and I lose it then...I go 'what? I want an indian name..there's no dearth of names in the vedas and hindu mythology..where is the need to go ask persians and russians to name my daughter....1 hr before the appointment you are telling me this....what will I do? I am bad at this..but you are worse' blah blah blah..I hv no idea why I was so melodramatic abt this :)
Anyway...so we fight..and Dips says 'ok...calm down...I will take this up...you cancel todays appointment...and I'll work on it'...He leaves for work in a huff..and we continue our argument over the phone. By this time, Bebloo is distracted and her breakfast is delayed. She's screaming and doesn't like the lack of attention. Bhavana (the nanny) wants to be of help and put an end to our misery so says
'didi...you please keep a small name for her' I go...'Oh is it? ok...then maybe 'Niyati' is good..' then I recall some others had said that they dint like 'Niyati' for her and I change my mind again...

2 hrs go by in all that and its almost 10. I realised there was no point pushing out the appointment....Dips and I would be in the same situation the next time around as well. We are just that way...somehow 'what's in a name' is not how we felt about it! But then, in a moment of calmness, I sat by myself and kept repeating 'Anshruta' and it somehow felt nice...and I felt comfortable that it did sound like a name that would suit the little baby wailing her head out for breakfast. It somehow felt right and I fast forwarded everything a few years down...and I liked the young girl I saw and liked that she would be called A-N-S-H-R-U-T-A. So I just called Dips minutes before he loses his signal in the tube and say 'I thnk she's Anshruta...I hv 10 min to get ready and go..and I thnk am going to do that...are you ok wth it' and he says 'I was ok all along..you were the one getting all confused and swaying coz mom, dad,greeshma, chirayu, bharat, ashwini, bhavana, chhavi, archita, shaji, rini, priti, anusha, vatsa, aparna, anup, amrutha all had 10 other name suggestions..and a 100 other opinions...go ahead and register her what you want to call her'....
I went to the registration office..and the receptionist goes..'oh u want to change her 1st name....you are coming almost a year after her birth...what's wrong wth 'Ashima' anyway'...
I almost said 'Ya right...now only ur opinion was lacking! Please can you spare that? I will have to make a 100 more calls to make up my mind again. Before I change my mind again, can we please just get done with the formality'
while filling the form...I thought again....called up Dips again...and confirmed ..and thn in neat block letters spelt it out wth confidence A-N-S-H-R-U-T-A
It did look unique..and I came out happily...called up Dips and said 'phew ...done'..and he goes 'did you take another appointment before you left the office? you shud have done that...so we can make another amend in a couple of weeks from now'...I said 'that lady at the reception will beat me up if I go back again to her'..thn he says 'no worries...I'll book the appointment and go next time...'

So till further notice, my li'l one will be called 'Anshruta Pandey'.

:) :)

The Mum-bay

Over the last few days, much has been said and written. The Mumbai topic was on the top of a lot of people's minds. A nation of over a billion people felt united through the common thread of emotions and reactions. Some of them who had the gift of the gab (http://shobhaade.blogspot.com/)were able to reverberate aptly what most of the nation felt and even managed to provoke thoughts and inspire some positive reactions.I, like a lot of others, was a mute and helpless spectator. A lot can be corrected, repaired, rebuilt and recovered. But for all those people who lost someone they knew and cared for, the loss is irreversible. For all of them, mum's the word.

Un Dino

A friend of mine talked me into this paper writing competition for a Project Management conference at work. As with everything at the start, I got into it very enthusiastically and chalked out an impressive plan for this paper writing. I checked out some of the relevant books from the library, planned out what all I would do to make this paper almost Nobel-prize worthy if nothing more! After all that initial hype, I got myself busy with work, play and all the other regular stuff and the paper writing didn’t figure in my list of things to do till the very last day! On the day of submission, I realized all I had really done towards the paper writing was repeatedly renew the library books which I had checked out without even reading one page of it! In the guilt and shame, I decided to not even attempt to write the paper. But then when my colleague said ‘Hey…your abstract got selected…how can you not attempt to submit something’ I just couldn’t give up the challenge.

I started writing the paper in the n+1th hour! Once I got into the mission critical task, there was no time for anything. There was no time for cooking, working, gym, phone calls, TV, friends…nothing! That one day, was solely dedicated to paper writing…and I decided to do a ‘night-out’ for the sake of the paper. I sat up till 4am trying to make progress. My brain was working at 25% capacity so was dead slow (if it hadn’t stopped altogether)! I don’t know why I thought I could listen to music and work at the same time! I enjoyed the music looked up the lyrics, kinda even learnt some of them up! As expected, a 25% multitasking brain, couldn’t have been very efficient! At 4am, I had 1 page written of the 6 pages I intended writing for the paper! And the content didn’t impress me. I was too bored to even review what I myself had written!

Anyway, all of this self-inflicted torture, reminded me of Un Dino...days at school and college. At school, I was reasonably ok. More or less was prepared for tests and exams. But still there were times, the evening before the exam, I would realize that I was totally unprepared. Then in all the panic, and for lack of a better strategy, I would take a decision of going off to bed at 8pm so that I could wake up at 2 or 3am to study. Waking up that early had some incentives! Mom would make me some steaming hot coffee and even get me some goodies to eat. (It is incredible that 20 years later, I remember, so vividly, the food aspect of the early morning study sessions!) After getting me all that, she would sit next to me awhile, to make sure I wasn’t dropping off to sleep and then she would herself nod off. More often than not, when she woke up at 6 or so, I would be panicking and crying about failing in the exam…because I would feel just as blank as I was the evening before! This happened a good number of times at school…even though I would keep promising myself that the next time around, I would be better prepared. Luckily, got out of school without any major fiascos!

After all the struggle in school, high school and the entrance exams, once I entered engineering college, I think I must have told myself ‘Yep, you have arrived. Now you can stop caring about marks and exams…just make it through these 4 years somehow, and life’s set’. All through the 4 years, I don’t remember studying AT ALL. The fretting before the exams happened…there was no change in that. All of us roomies would be up late in the night, trying to look up previous years question papers and prepare some 4 or 5 questions and leaving the rest to the all knowing benevolent almighty! During the exam month, the hostel used to be alive at 2am. Am sure, Un Dino, the canteen within the hostel increased the supply of Maggi to meet the increased demands of the nocturnal beings. In spite of the casual attitude got out of college with a degree and a job!

The situation in post graduation wasn’t very different. Well, how could it be! It was the same me...adding up a few years to my age didn’t necessarily mean adding up more goodness into me! The same struggle continued in the mornings of the exams during MBA. At times, all the studying for the exam happened in the 20 minute rickety auto ride to the institute! Seriously, isn’t it astounding, that I couldn’t find 20 calm minutes the evening before? Well, I never found it all my life, so I don’t expect today or tomorrow to be any different.

The irony of it all is the fact that, today, my primary responsibility at work as a project analyst is planning and scheduling for programs and products spanning across 2-4 years!

The best of tennis!

They are calling yesterday's Wimbledon final between Nadal and Federer the 'Greatest match ever'...and rightly so. We got to see two players who seemed to have perfected the skill of playing tennis! They seem to have tuned not only their bodies but their minds too for a perfect game of tennis. Who wanted the cup more, is debatable....but we can be sure that for both of them, in the moments when the match and the cup tilted in the others favor, it would have been very tough to not feel an ounce of desperation and focus on just giving back a perfect and sensational shot!

Read this about Federer's demeanor in some article, which I thought perfectly described him 'With the casual aplomb of a gentleman pouring a glass of wine...'!
I absolutely loved Federer's calmness during the match. He almost reminded me of Arjun (ya ya, from the Mahabharata...:) who could see the ball and nothing else. It din't matter...if the match was almost going to Nadal..or whether it was just a point in the starting game of a set. He wasn't unnerved EVER. He seemed totally detatched from any emotion whatsoever! I wonder how they do that! I was a bunch of nerves, just watching the match. :-) To me, the way he spoke at the award ceremony was almost an epitome of sportsmanship spirit. He made no bones about the fact that he was disappointed but at the same time, totally accepted that Nadal was just a better player yesterday. And no...he hasn't given up...he finished his little interview with 'I'll be back on this court next year to win' :)

This line about Nadal was so true about the perfection with which he played yesterday 'But then, that's the story of Nadal. He always makes you hit one more shot than you want to'. That was just how the way it was yesterday. You would think the point is gone to Federer and Nadal was just reach out miraculously and hit the ball and even make it land in the right place! Though his serves and aces were nothing compared to Federer's, Nadal was just able to play better yesterday. More of his shots landed where they were supposed to. He made fewer unforced errors...and he really deserved to win yesterday. It was interesting watching an emotional Nadal climbing up to the spectator stand to share the moment with his family and then walking on the roof to acknowledge the members of the royalty! Someone commented 'Leave it to Nadal to take the most difficult route' :D

All in all, it was the best of tennis! :)

A veiled vision

I sat in the lobby of a beach resort in Penang, observing people. Some of them were checking-in/out and some of them were returning from the beach or the pool. There were very few business travelers. Most of them were there on a holiday, it was obvious. There were people from all over and I sat there using one of my favorite techniques of killing time-watching people and wondering about their lives and history! Some of them were on a honeymoon and there was the ‘did-I-get-married-to-the-right-person?’ look on some of their faces. I wondered if at the end of the trip, the apparent tension would vanish and they would go back to live happily ever after. And there were some who seemed blissfully happy and thoroughly enjoying the time off with their families and friends.

But in this session, what hijacked most of my thoughts were not people whose faces I tried to read…but those that, I couldn’t read. Couldn’t read..not because they had expressionless faces…because their faces were covered in burqas. It struck me, that these women, couldn’t use their facial expressions to emote. They would have to express anger or displeasure at say, the hotel staff either with strong words, bang of a fist or through their partners! Well, this is definitely not the biggest inconvenience a burqa clad woman faces, am sure…just that it was something that struck me only now. Maybe they are different people than what their friends and families know them as, because of a lot of the body language being hidden under the burqa. And then, of course the more obvious thought grazed by…they were here having flown miles and miles away from home, at a beautiful beach,all covered up…just watching their husbands and kids splash around in water…Were they smiling underneath? Did they really feel the warm sun and crisp sea breeze from under that burqa? Did they want to let out the child in them and scream excitedly in the water…go jet skiing or parasailing? Did they feel that it was all worth the while…flying half way across the globe? I wondered on…what more were they missing out on because of the piece of cloth on them? The good part is that a lot of them are probably not even aware of what they are missing out on…simply because the thought or desire to do this and that, doesn’t even occur to them.

I recently finished reading ‘Sold’. ‘Sold’ is the true story of Zana Muhsen and her sister who were born and brought up in the UK and were forcibly sold as brides to grooms in Yemen. Their father sells them off to his friends and sends them to Yemen at the pretext of a holiday. The young girls who were used to the british upbringing till they were about 15 find it very hard to cope with the life that Yemenis women are expected to lead. The ironical part of the whole thing is that, as time goes by (Zana finally manages to escape after 8 years) these free thinking girls feel very insecure without their burqas and don them even if they aren’t forced into them.

At the end of it all, I realised, maybe the burqa doesn't bother them at all...but I decided to value my freedom a little more…and went for a jog by the beach! :)

The Reluctant Fundamentalist

Mohsin Hamid's second book, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, has gotten rave reviews, won a lot of awards and even been nominated for the 2007 Man Booker prize. There are a lot of reviews and opinions online and I don't really want to repeat and reinforce what has already been said and take up some more bytes in the virtual space. I want to put forth some thoughts about the protagonist, Changez.

The story of Changez and his move from Pakistan to US and back is narrated in this book as a monologue. Changez meets an American visiting Lahore and ends up telling him the story of his life, the impact the 9/11 attack had on him and how it eventually lead him to come back to his country. Even as Changez started his narration, I immediately connected with him at some level. His aspirations of going to a good university and coming out with a nice job felt so much like how I and most of my friends thought and felt in our late teens. Once you connect with the person on some of the very important aspects of life, you tend to think of him/her as someone very much like you. You unknowingly settle down, lower your guard and get comfortable and open-minded. I was in that frame of mind, totally unsuspecting when I reached the part about the 9/11 attack. Changez heard about the attacks like many of us did...turned on the TV and saw the early unedited reports trickling in. He saw the chaos and the confusion, just like many of us did. I felt deceived when he spoke of his reaction. He smiled! He felt a certain pleasure at the symbolism of it all...of the fact that someone had brought America to its knees. From my understanding of human psyche, I am not able to fathom how someone (sane, like Changez) could smile watching something like that. That's just inhuman. I can understand hard core criminals, hardened soldiers not flinch at the sight of a thousand people being killed. I can understand a religious fanatic feel nice about something like this. Changez was just a normal citizen of Pakistan. If the intent of the book was to portray how civilians of impacted Muslim countries have come to feel this way, then his narration wasn't compelling enough. I for one, haven't got any better understanding of his people, his country's perspective than what I started off with.

The protagonist is a 22 year old. Some might argue that his thoughts and actions at times reflect some immaturity and in-experience.In my opinion, some things are very inborn. One doesn't need to have grey hair to be able to see that the opinion and decisions taken by the head of the country might not necessarily be in-line with a citizen of that country. Changez's mentor, Jim,in the company he works for is a true friend and guide. In some situations, Jim goes out of his way for Changez's sake and entrusts the firms reputation and a lot of responsibility on Changez. During one such assignment, Changez figures himself out, and decides that he truly belongs back home, in Pakistan and not there in the US. Once this realization dawns on him, he drops the task in hand and puts Jim's position and the firms reputation in jeopardy and walks out. His inability to shield a true friend and supporter from the impact of his decision surprised me. In my opinion, his priorities are to the people who loved and cared for him. There's no rule that one must return all the good that one has received...but there definitely is an expectation. Changez fell short of my expectations.

An idea worth spreading...

http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2008/03/jill-bolte-taylors-amazing-ted.html