Chander Gupta
Pet name that my parents fondly gave to me in my infancy has continued well into my sixties. My younger siblings even now call me by pet name ‘Titu.’ Pet name had become my nickname gradually as it spread amongst neighbours, classmates, and relatives. From my childhood to adulthood, most of my relatives did not know my given name ‘Chander’. I would be referred to by pet name only.
In my social circle, I know only the nicknames of many wards of friends, relatives, colleagues, and other acquaintances. If the given name is ever mentioned in a conversation in such instances, I am at a loss to identify the youngster being talked about. The pervasive use of pet name or the nickname since childhood obliterates the given name from memory. A cousin’s daughter was always called by the nickname ‘Appu’. I learnt about her given name ‘Kivya’ much later when Appu had become a mother of two daughters.
Many grown up people use initials of their given name on their nameplates in the offices. People use initials either if their names are too long or if their names are old-fashioned.
Once I had a boss whose name was N. L. Joshi. Using his surname, we would address him as ‘Joshi’ ji. The nameplate on the door of the cabin read ‘N. L. Joshi’. We remained oblivious to the full form of ‘N. L.’ Our nonchalance had a hilarious consequence one day.
A postman used to come to our office daily to deliver office dak, mostly official. One day, when my boss happened to be on leave, the postman brought a registered letter in private name. The addressee’s name was not suffixed with a designation. The envelope bore the name Mr. Natha Lal followed by the address of the office. All of us in the office were confounded by the name Natha Lal. We unanimously told the postman that there was no ‘Natha Lal’ in our office. Only after the letter had been returned that there was a flash in a colleague’s mind that ‘Mr Natha Lal’ would have been none other than our boss ‘N. L. Joshi’.
In our organisation, there was one senior officer, in the rank of General Manager (GM), who displayed his name as Ram K Gupta. No one knew what the ‘K’ in the name stood for. When asked the name of the General Manager in a promotion interview, a junior officer replied confidently that it was Shri Ram K Gupta. To the interviewer’s pointed question as to what the initial ‘K’ stood for, the poor candidate failed to answer, and to get promotion. It was afterwards revealed that the mysterious ‘K’ stood for ‘Khilawan’.
There was another General Manager with the displayed name of K R Maheshwari, both in English and in Hindi as well. The PA to the GM committed the unpardonable sin of getting GM’s full name, Kalu Ram Maheshwari, printed on D.O. letter heads. Giving his PA a dressing down, the GM passed instructions for destruction of the freshly printed pads of DO letter heads.
Then there was another senior officer who always displayed his name as D. M. Mathur. His colleagues called him, indeed without any malice, Donkey Monkey Mathur behind his back.