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Prior to joining my current company, I was in another company (of course silly!!) that placed me in Chennai. Now, Chennai is very different from Kolkata. In Kolkata, people wear nice colorful shirts on plain, short shorts. In Chennai, they wear colorful trousers and for the top-half, they prefer to remain naked, amply demonstrating the proliferate chest-hair and extruding bellies. So, in toto, Kolkatans are colorful on the upper half, while Chennai-ites are colored on the bottom-half. This excludes Rajanikanth, who's colored on both halves. In fact, if you turn a Kolkata-ite upside-down, he would look like the alter-ego of his Chennai counterpart. The vice-versa is also true.
Now, how is this relevant to the topic? Very simple.... since they have contrasting characters, Chennai-ites tend to extend your name by adding a combination of phonics. In Kolkata, they tend to shorten your name, almost as if gasping for breath while pronouncing it. Let me explain that further....
I started facing a strange problem in Chennai. People started calling me Sudarshana (note the extra 'a' at the end!), with a slight ringing tone. The elderlies would actually add a 'n' too, like Sudarshan-an. It's like the naive junior school kid writing 'banana' for the first time. Not knowing when to stop, he would scribble banananana..!! And soon, it spread like an epidemic - everyone calling me Sudar-zana or Sudarshana or Sudarshanan, in different variants of classical undertones. In fact, I was now able to tell Iyers apart from Iyengars depending on how they articulated my name.
Nowadays, I am in Kolkata, where this name is pronounced more uniformly, as in Sudorson. I have learnt to live with that now. A new problem emerged when we went to a party. I introduced my son - Mudit - to my friends. But, they couldn't get it right. "Mudi!! What kind of name is that?? You could have instead named him 'Moody', he he he... ", one of them proffered helpfully. The poor chap soon came to be known as Mudi.
My son protested, "Why do they cut my name short dad?". "It's because they adore you, dear - so they shorten your name for love...", I reasoned. "That's not done", he retorted ".. then, does it mean that those here who lust for me, will call me Mud?"
Prior to joining my current company, I was in another company (of course silly!!) that placed me in Chennai. Now, Chennai is very different from Kolkata. In Kolkata, people wear nice colorful shirts on plain, short shorts. In Chennai, they wear colorful trousers and for the top-half, they prefer to remain naked, amply demonstrating the proliferate chest-hair and extruding bellies. So, in toto, Kolkatans are colorful on the upper half, while Chennai-ites are colored on the bottom-half. This excludes Rajanikanth, who's colored on both halves. In fact, if you turn a Kolkata-ite upside-down, he would look like the alter-ego of his Chennai counterpart. The vice-versa is also true.
Now, how is this relevant to the topic? Very simple.... since they have contrasting characters, Chennai-ites tend to extend your name by adding a combination of phonics. In Kolkata, they tend to shorten your name, almost as if gasping for breath while pronouncing it. Let me explain that further....
I started facing a strange problem in Chennai. People started calling me Sudarshana (note the extra 'a' at the end!), with a slight ringing tone. The elderlies would actually add a 'n' too, like Sudarshan-an. It's like the naive junior school kid writing 'banana' for the first time. Not knowing when to stop, he would scribble banananana..!! And soon, it spread like an epidemic - everyone calling me Sudar-zana or Sudarshana or Sudarshanan, in different variants of classical undertones. In fact, I was now able to tell Iyers apart from Iyengars depending on how they articulated my name.
Nowadays, I am in Kolkata, where this name is pronounced more uniformly, as in Sudorson. I have learnt to live with that now. A new problem emerged when we went to a party. I introduced my son - Mudit - to my friends. But, they couldn't get it right. "Mudi!! What kind of name is that?? You could have instead named him 'Moody', he he he... ", one of them proffered helpfully. The poor chap soon came to be known as Mudi.
My son protested, "Why do they cut my name short dad?". "It's because they adore you, dear - so they shorten your name for love...", I reasoned. "That's not done", he retorted ".. then, does it mean that those here who lust for me, will call me Mud?"
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