What's in a Name?

"My name is John...Jonas John"

Err...but it doesn't end there.

"....Arun Jonas John"


Now, I dont have anything against the name Arun personally. And Iam also proud of having one 'Indian' name besides my other more 'videshi' ones, but when it happens to be one of the most common first names south of the Vindhyas and also begins with the first letter of the alphabet, it can be a real pain sometimes.

My baptism ceremony, Church, some 23 odd years ago....

The usual rush, the usual crowds, the usual discussions.
Aunty1 - So what's the final decision on your dear's name?
Appa(proudly) - Jonas John
Aunty2 - But...you mean to tell me he will have only two names? How is that possible? No one has just two names! You have to give him a third!
Amma - That's what I was telling him all the while! Now see what's happened!
Appa(confused) - But I thought....OK, it's still not too late. We can still have a third name.
Uncle1 - Call him Jacob!
Appa - That would make it JJJ. No way!
Grandma - Abraham!
Appa - A shorter name, please.....
Amma - I want an Indian sounding name. He has enough of Biblical ones.
Aunty1 - Ramesh!
Amma - Isn't that a Hindu name?
Uncle2 - Selvaratnam! Very Tamil!
Appa - Too Tamil!
The Priest walks up - Are we ready yet? It's getting late for the ceremony.
Appa - Yes, Father. {to others}Give me a name fast!
Cousin1 - How about Arun?
Appa - Great! Arun it is! Arun Jonas John. Let's begin, Father!

They say they couldn't stop me crying during my baptism.

Ever noticed how Christian names tend to evoke a sense of exoticism in people? One of the advantages of being a miniscule religious minority in such a vast country. I wish my name atleast had been Jonas Arun John.
Consider this.
You are being ushered in to meet your potential boss for an interview and the secretary says, "Sir, a Mr. Arun is here to see you." The response would be, "Ho hum, send him in...."
But if it had been, "Sir, a Mr. Jonas is here to see you.", he is more likely to go, "Sounds interesting, send him in!"
You would no longer have to wory about creating an impression, only about maintaining one! And of course, there are a few other reasons too....

My school, 12th standard, some 5 years ago....

Half-yearly exams are just a week away.

Friend - Prepared for the French exam yet?
Me - Naa, not much to prepare, is there?...and still got a week, anyway.
French Teacher walks in - Bon jour! Students, an announcement to begin with. Due to time clashes, we have had to prepone the French viva to today. Now, dont look so shocked, it's only a viva, after all! (smiles)
Friend - Only a viva?! What a joke!
Me - Gimme the French book! Gimme the French book now! Good thing we're sitting at the back of the room. She should take some time before getting to us!
Friend - But I thought you didn't have much to....
Me - Shut up and mug!!
French Teacher - Now, Iam going to call you for the viva individually in the alphabetical order. So, let's see, .....yes, Arun! Let's begin with you. Come up here please.

My friend sniggers, I scowl.

An uncommon name is a great asset to have while making conversation with strangers. With mine, they automatically tend to relate it with the few great personalities they know having the same name. I quite enjoy that, coz I've played that game quite a few times and I know the rules quite well by now.
"Jonas?...so is Bjorkman your favourite tennis player?" "Err..no, but I do follow tennis quite closely....blah, blah..."
"Jonas?...I've always been fascinated by the story of Jonah in the whale's stomach!" "Oh yes, three whole days! Can you imagine that?....blah, blah..."
A couple of really knowlegdable dudes have actually come up with, "Jonas?...so do you run after mosquitoes like Salk did?"
Alas, no chance of any fun like this with Arun. Much too common, you see.

My cubicle, my office, last week...

Everyone's hard at work in their respective Dilbertian cubicles. The lone phone which receives calls from the outside world and is strategically located at the farthest corner of the room, starts ringing.
A guy answers it and then calls out, "Arun, call for you!"
"Hmmm...now who could that be, calling me now?" I wonder as I rise to my feet in my cubicle.
And I see 4 other heads rising simultaneously from their cubicle kingdoms along with me. We look at each other uncertainly, hesitantly, almost sheepishly. A few gesticulations between us later, the Arun closest to the phone gets to answer the call. Incidentally, it happens to be his call as well. Once that's established, the other 4 Aruns sink back into their cubicles.
10 minutes later, the phone rings again and the call goes out again, "Arun, call for you!"
"Oh no, Iam not falling for that one again!" I smile to myself and sit tight.
A minute later, an irate face appears at the partition of my cubicle and asks, "Didn't you hear me calling you! You are Arun, aren't you?"
"Err,..I think so"...sheesh!

My mail ID doesn’t have Arun in it. Neither does my signature. Nor does my blog (except for this one, that is).But inspite of my best efforts, most people continue to call me Arun. Because we like the name, is the convenient reason given. I know people are more comfortable with familiarity, but still.....

Anyways, Iam branded for life and I might as well accept it!

Movies, the Animated Way!

"How about watching 'Madagascar' today?" I asked my friends a couple of days back. The derisive snorts and cold silence that followed told me what they thought about that idea. Oh well, .....Finally, I got a reasonably like-minded pal to accompany me to the film and yes, it didn't disappoint. Not the best, but definitely paisa vasool!

Got me wondering what exactly I find so appealing in these kind of 'children's cartoon' movies which my peers find so boring. One thing to be noted though, Iam not talking about the traditional Disney animation with Mickey, Donald and the like (not that I don't like them, but I definitely wouldn't pay 100 bucks to watch it at Sathyam). This is more about the likes of Monsters Inc., Shark's Tale, Shrek, .....which have this streak of delightfully intelligent humour running right through them. I guess it all began with 'The Jungle Book'. And nowadays, every animation movie seems to be targetted at a larger audience than just 'kids'.

More than the humour or the technology involved, I guess the one thing that gets me hooked on to these movies are the 'personalities' they portray. Animated characters are invariably just caricatures endowed with nothing more than a couple of distinct personality traits, which are completely exploited through the course of the film...And anticipating exactly how the director accomplishes that is what the movie is all about for me. Also, the sole existence of these characters is to fit into their particular role in their particular movie, which is unlike real-life actors. Consider Al Pacino in 'Scarface'. however well he played the lead role, you knew it was actually a talented guy called Pacino making the role come alive. In the absence of such prejudices, animated characters naturally are what they err...pretend to be.

Hence, some memorable 'personalities' like Baloo, the simple, fun-loving bear who believes only in the 'bear necessities' of life, Dory, the pleasant but horrendously forgetful fish, Scar, the cool and suave ultimate villain, Sid, the clumsy but eternally optimistic sloth, .....and so many more. Oh yes, it's the personalities that stand out!

And to all the doubters who are smirking while reading this, I will just follow the orders of the cunning penguin chief in 'Madagascar' who famously said, "Just smile and wave, boys. Just smile and wave."

'Engineering' Dreams?

Yet another Court ruling, yet another furore, and the fate of engineering courses in Tamil Nadu sinks deeper into the mire of confusion.

The latest twist comes with the Supreme Court ruling that reservations and quotas are out in unaided private professional colleges. The immediate scathing response to it has now put the Government firmly in the spotlight.
The most affected institutions would definitely be the private engineering colleges, especially in 'engineer-prolific' states like Tamil Nadu. Earlier, half the seats in such colleges would end up unfilled, partly due to the lack of eligible candidates for the reserved category. Hence, Mr. Jeppiar's (who is the face of private engineering colleges in TN) unbridled joy at the Supreme Court ruling when he said, "This was the only way we could have sustained our colleges over the next 5 years." A euphemistic way of making a capitalistic statement, "This is the only way we could have made money." I shudder to think of the quality of the students getting in as wannabe engineers in Mr. Jeppiar's new admission system, whatever it may be. On the other hand, if a student requires a quota system to get a seat in a B-grade engineering college, it doesn't speak too highly of his capabilities either.

So in the end, the Supreme Court talks about 'greater autonomy', Parliament talks about 'social justice' and private colleges talk about 'better admission systems', and in the midst of all this, the real victim is ignored - Engineering Education, as it continues to spiral downwards to new depths of mediocrity in the State.

Engineering is dead! Long live engineering!

The Art of Communication

It really is an art! Especially when you make up for lack of content with verbosity in speech. Am I an expert at it? I really dunno, but I sure am getting enough practice during the weekly status meetings at office.

The status meeting teleconference (tcon) is a weekly half-hour ritual where I get to speak for all of 3 minutes. So it is kinda depressing if my content isn't voluminous enough to push my airtime beyond 30 seconds. The alternative? - 'Communicate'....

Client Onsite - "So lets move to the Chennai team next! Jonas, are you there?"

Me - "Yes, XXXX, Iam here. Well, during the last week, I've been trying to find more efficient means of carrying out our testing. I first installed this new tool YYYY which looks very promising. I carried out a few dry runs and it does seem to give better results. Iam yet to quantify the actual benefits we would get out of it, but Iam working on it. But on the whole, I think this tool would serve our purpose very well. I believe our performance could be improved many times by going for this tool. The exact figures Iam hopeful of presenting to you in the next tcon, but yes, this looks very promising....blah blah...., 2 minutes.......blah blah,.....and that's the week's report from my side."

Client Onsite - "Err....thanks, Jonas! Great job!"

What a farce!

The Edgbaston Thriller

The ecstatic scream with face turned heavenwards from Micheal Vaughan said it all.
After more than a year of hype surrounding the showdown between the undisputed champions of the modern game and the team touted as the most likely to take the crown from them, Vaughan desperately needed to get onto the scoresheet in the Ashes. And this victory must have been extra sweet, considering the tremendous last-ditch effort by the Australian tail.


My personal learnings out of the match:


1.Australia is not a one-man team. Yeah, like we didn't know that. But consider this,....

for the rest, continue here

Saree for the Season?

A bit of old news, but those billboards of Jyothika all over the city serve to keep it as fresh as ever.

RmKV, a leading manufacturer and retailer of silk sarees in the south, has identified for itself a unique image for better brand recall - 'The silk company which believes in creating Guiness Records'.

Last fortnight, they came out with this saree having the most number of colours on it - 54600 to be precise, which will hopefully get them into the record books.
Pretty decent effort that...I can think of many women who would love to be seen in that one and having conversations like.....
W1 : Wow! Is this THE saree you are wearing? How many colours did you say it had?
W2 : (modestly) 54600....
W1 : Oooh!! 54600!?...Let me check if it's true!...one, two, three,....

OK, so maybe she wouldn't actually try counting them all, but with women, you never know....A more practical purpose would be to wear it to your favourite paint shop when you're in the mood for a little house-painting. You could go something like:"Humph!! But you dont have the shade of blue I want! See this blue on my saree here? Now that's what Iam looking for!"

All said and done, a much more sensible record-attempt by RmKV than their previous one, where they successfully created the longest saree in the world, measuring a whopping 214 metres. With some of the women-folk I know taking an hour to drape themselves in an ordinary saree, I can only shudder at what would happen if they tried out any stunt of this kind.

Coming back to the 54600, an RmKV official was asked what the saree was going to be priced at, to which he replied, "We figured it was fair enough to charge one rupee for every colour".

Sounds fair enough to me too!