TUESDAY, APRIL 30, 2024
Pradeep V Kamat
What is there in a name? A rose by any other name will smell as sweet, so wrote the Bard of Stratford on Avon. What the great poet meant was if we start calling sun, moon, earth…, by any other names, there wouldn’t be any cosmic alteration!. So also the performance, achievements, work of great personalities in the world will not be affected if they themselves decide to change their names.
In our day-to-day life, we come across so many people whom we interact with, for our domestic necessities. Say for example milkman, or our friendly pavwala. Or fish vendor…..They serve us. They have names but it hardly matters to us as long as they give us good service. . The whole world will be thrown into chaos, out of gear if they decide to go on flash strike en masse for a minute!
Take another example, when we plan to travel, we start ball rolling by calling various travel agents. The female receptionist (most of the times) answers our call in sweet, mellifluous voice. At times we are tempted to ask her name, but then we realize that it’s against civilized norms. But our onward journey becomes smooth even without knowing her name!
Travel agents, managers (from travel office to star hotels), boys, errands, waiters, drivers , tour guides, ….all help us to make our journey comfortable, pleasurable and memorable. This is true in business trips too. Yet when we return home especially after a long holiday we are busy describing the travel vividly to our close relatives, friends. Even we mention people and praise them we came across. Yet we never know their names.
This is true in all spheres of life. The world runs with unrecognized people who work in various sectors behind the scenes and make our life comfortable.
Some people come to your rescue in difficult situations and disappear in thin air before you ask their name, as if they are god’s messengers. Take a recent case. As I was returning home (Assagao) from Margao in late hours of night my car’s front tyre went flat. It was deserted street at that unearthly hour of 1 am. Then suddenly a tall burly man in his early thirties, riding on bullet appeared from nowhere. Upon seeing me as senior citizen he said “can I help?’ I agreed to his offer. Without even allowing me to touch the tyre, he fixed it in jiffy. While on ‘his job ‘ we talked on wide ranging subjects from politics to bitcoin investments. I gathered he was well informed. As I was about to ask his name and details and also wanted to thank him profusely, he disappeared with that powerful machine in darkness!
Many a times in villages names are given by person’s look, color, nature,…thus I have in my village, Gobro, Bomil, Dharku, Dishtikan, Divad (non-poisonous snake), khadyo, Badyo to name a few. These nicknames given by earlier generations remain and future generations have no clue about their actual names!!
Bollywood celebrities seem to be comfortable with short forms.
Thus we have SRK, BIG B, Sallu, Shotgun…and in cricket we have MSD, Yuvi, Paji, master blaster. ..list endless.
There are other situations where though we know a person’s name well, we can’t call or say it out of respect . For eg. -Sir, Madam, dotorbab, editorsahab, managerji …etc. etc.
And they respond coolly, as if it’s their name!!
