"Abhisek, Alok, Amandeep, Anurag.." She continues. Calls out some fifty names. Then "Srinivas, Sudarsan Rao, Sumukh" She pauses for a second. Then looks towards the chirpy students. She turns back to the register. Now this time it is different. She did not just look at the attendance register. She stares. Keeps staring. Her lips began murmuring something, as if she is asked to spell a spell of magic for some wizard. "G-I-N".. "X-I-N".. "J-I-N".. At last she calls out "04IT55". I guess because she cant waste her time on "Mississippi" like hard to pronounce word.
She then ask "How do you spell your name?". "G-I-N, Ma'm" comes the prompt lingering voice. "Okay! J-I-N", She murmured. "Ma'm, its G-I-N not J-I-N. 'G' as in 'Ganesh' ". Forget about spelling the whole name. They were struggling even to spell out just the first name.
/*full content not produced [read the full content when its published]*/
I recall one of the comedian Russel Peters show where he says, "I love Indian names. How they were pronounced. An name that spells 'S-U-K-H D-E-E-P' ended up being spelled 'SUCK DEEP' and a name 'H-A-R D-I-P' as 'H-A-R-D D-I-C-K'." They sound as if they need some censoring. S**K or the like. But its true that such things happens. And I wasn't shocked to hear it. It was even funny. Really funny. A rechristening of 'Rabindranath Thakur' to 'Rabrindranath Tagore' is not uncommon. It happens everywhere. And Indian name being hard to be pronounced in US. But it is surprising that an Indian name is hard to be pronounced in India itself. Well! We can give that exception that the size of India is huge.
Indeed it is enjoying to play with names. How a lovely name might sounds weird in someone else's ear. But sometimes the 'Tagore from Thakur' principle seems so attractive.
"Lian Pr S****, Class is over. Lets go!" A friend yelled.
P.S feels like putting this thing up. I gave it for the vitruvian article. Hope it pass thru the editorial filtering.
Comments