What's in a name? Sigh!! Ask me!!

For the past 21 years I have had 2 names and when I say 2 names I mean 2 good names. It would have been all right if I had one good name called Revathi and the other one called chintoo, mintoo, munnu, chunnu, babloo, or something. That way at least people would have been able to differentiate between my good name and my pet name. but in my case I have 2 good names namely Revathi and Shruthi. And let me tell u for a perennially perplexed person like me its quite a confusing thing to have 2 names. When I was born my parents named me Shruthi. For the next two years I was called shruthi and I have a birth certificate which says I am shruthi. In the year 1988 my family suddenly decided to change my name to Revathi. I have asked all the members of my family why my name was changed but haven’t got any concrete answers. Some of the answers I got were

1. When I asked my sis she told me that I wasn’t the own child of my parents and that mom and dad had adopted me from the milk man who had 10 daughters, was in abject poverty and my parents decided to adopt a daughter of his (me!!) and since the milk man had named me shruthi my parents didn’t want to change it and hurt his feelings so once we moved to a different place my name was changed. For a long time, I think till class 12th I believed that I was adopted and would pick petty fights with my parents thinking they were being unkind to me because I was adopted.

2. Shruthi in Sanskrit means good sound or pleasant sound. My cousins tell me that two years after having named me the family realized that naming me shruthi was like naming TR Rajender Azhagu Sundaram or like naming a child of laloo Prasad yadav and rabri devi as Einstein. There is a saying in hindi which goes aankh ke andhe naam nayan sukh which would describe this situation perfectly!! Anyway my cousins said that my name had been changed because it would have been ironical if I had been called shruthi because I cried all the time and croaked like a frog. And that’s why my name was changed to a harmless revathi which doesn’t mean anything and is the name of a star in the sky.

3. My uncle tells me that he named me because he loved the movie mouna ragam and decided to name me after the heroine in the movie called revathi. Till date I shudder to think of what would have happened if my uncle had watched some other movie and decided to name me manorama or jayalalitha or something. Sheeesh!! The way my family members have played with my name!!


Anyway like I said the problem of having two good names gave rise to a lot of confusions and errr. Heart breaks in my life. Now at home no body knows that I am called revathi in school, college and office and outside of home no one knows I am called shruthi. I remember in school I had this huge crush on a guy and once he told me that he would call me and come home in the evening and collect my history notebook for some notes. I floated all the way home and all evening I waited beside the phone for his call. As fate would have it the phone rang when I went to get a drink of water and dad picked the phone. Now my dad is really absent minded. He forgets our birthdays, his own birthday, his anniversary, which class we study in, where we work for everything. The only thing he does remember is the name of latest version of linux. Ubuntu, edubuntu whatever. :-\.. Anyway this was the conversation between the cute guy and my dad

Cute guy: Hi uncle. Can I speak to Revathi

Dad: Revathi?? There is no revathi here. Wrong number

Cute guy: is this Mr.Ramanan’s house

Dad: yes, but no revathi here. (click)

Me looking at dad: (thinking). Not only have u ruined my life, u also just lost a great son in law.

So u get the drift. I had a tough time managing two names. And to top it all in one of the schools I attended there was a girl called shruthi and that gave rise to confusions galore. I would answer her attendance, collect her papers and was mortified when I saw “Shruthi loves nikhil” scratched in big bold letters on one of the trees in school, only to realize later that they weren’t talking about me. Personally I love the name shruthi. All my life I have hated the name Revathi and sometimes I wish things had been the other way round with all my important documents and birth certificates bearing the name shruthi and revathi as a pet name. I have never been able to relate to the name revathi. It reeks of sophistication and panache two words, I would never associate myself with. :)

Whats in a name said Shakespeare. That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. Yes sir it would smell as sweet no doubt even if it were called sewage but then the name defines the identity of a person and having two identities is not something which I like. Sheeesh. I wish I was alive in the year 1498 so I could have explained to Shakespeare the importance of having a name and a single name at that. I mean seriously would he have taken lightly to the fact if we changed his name from William Shakespeare to a Billy Shakeabong or something? :-\