Thursday, May 20, 2004

"Weather, Cynical Singaporeans and the Bible" or "Why Sidin?"

First of all thanks for the tremendous response to the previous post. Tons of people wrote. In fact after two days I had tears in my eyes. "All those people had so much fun reading it... and I didn't make a penny", I thought. The tears turned into a torrent. A big thank to you all those cracking enthu IIMK people too.

Hiding between the warm comments were a few people asking me what my name meant. Now I was on the search for a succulent topic to write about next. And something besides depressing lack of female company. So I had my criterion set for a new post. Something enjoyable, popular but without involving women. Which left very few things to write about, all illegal and most of them gross.

Thats when the idea of revealing the history of my name was suggested. And indeed I had something that should keep that hit counter ticking over. So here goes. Revelations by the pint. Dear family please forgive me.

Sidin. My name. And that of an italian company which went bankrupt. Sidin is also a name popular in Indonesia I think. I keep finding the word on Indonesian websites. Even assuming I am popular and dont know it, they all can't possibly be references to me. But who knows, the Japanese I hear love Rajni movies. Indonesia may have a thing for fat mallus. (All of you who thought "Shakeela" when I said fat mallu raise your hands)

My father's name is Sunny. Yes as in the weather. And yes the tams out there will mispronounce it. At REC Trichy (which is in tam land) I joined the NCC in first year. I wanted to lose weight and develop character. And it was cumpolsary to join one of the NCC, NSO or NSS. The NCC was better fed. At our first parade the tams had much fun shouting out my name wrongly. I was miffed and left the outfit after a day. The indignation was too great. Also I passed out while jogging round the footer field and had to lie down senseless for an hour in front of 50 people.

Now my mother's name is a whole different story. My grandfather is one of those journeymen types. Hitchhiked to Bombay when he was young. Worked for an Englishman, then the railways and finally retired as a civil servant. He watched a lot of English movies in his heyday. Many of them being biblical classics. Thus when his first two kids were born their names were inspired by the movies he saw. My mother's elder brother was Samson and my mom became Dilaila. Such things happen.

Fast forward many years. I am born!! (Jarring isnt it. Like when you board a superfast long-distance nonstop bus, and 5 minutes into the trip you suddenly want to pee.) Now Mallus are the most evil minded baby-namers in the world. Being a mallu myself I can write volumes on the strange ones I have come across. All names have stories too. Of course there is one name I can never forget. I was one of the judges for the long jump competition in school and was marking distances for the girls event. (I was a very sporty guy in school, judged long jump, discus, umpired cricket and hockey and water-boyed for the basketball team.) Half way into the day I notice the next jumper's name. And couldnt hold myself anymore. "Shitty Abraham, 7A" it said. I ran to a teacher and showed it to her. She nodded gravely. "We have told her parents about it. They are changing it soon". I dont even want to know the history or inspiration behind that one. Wonder what they renamed her though. Anything is better than "Shitty". Even Purity, as a nurse in Hinduja Hospital is named. Sometimes its as if Mallus have a cynical sense of humour. I know a guy who is over 6 feet tall and as broad as a blast furnace. Whose name was Baby. Oh he had a big beard too.

Anyways in April '79 I erupted with life and all the wheels started moving. The unthinkable happened. Now it seems quite scary being a nameless kid in mallu land. Anything could have gone wrong. Imagine being called Bright Sunny. The perpetrators decided to derive a name out of Sunny and Dilaila. So they took parts of both, rearranged it added an I and N for garnishing and voila!! Sidin was born. A harmless name indeed. But Dinny, Dilly, Linny etc. were all considered before the goodwill of my ancestors or past life or whatever prevented me from sounding pansy my enter life. Ladies and gentlemen being overweight is bad enough.

Of course many things have happened as I grew up to keep reminding me that I have a pretty interesting name. A teacher used to call me "Sudden". Then there is that story that has the house roaring everytime my dad narrates it. After much penny pinching and brochure reading the family flew to Singapore and Hong Kong for a few weeks in 1986. We landed at Changi airport and walked out briskly as our travel agent had adviced. We would be welcomed by a receiver holding up a placard with our names. That was a little corny in itself. But after half an hour of frantic craning of necks and searching we still couldnt find our placard. Then my Dad huffed a bit and took us to a cute oriental lady (Even when I was 7 I knew a cute one when I saw her. At that age I called her aunty of course. Things are not too different today though.) She held up a placard in bright orange.

And on it were emblazoned the words "The Funny Family". Like it was a sitcom or something. My dad cordially clarified the error "That's Sunny Family madam". We had orange sticker badges in case we got lost which said "Funny" too. Needless to say we were quite a hit in the tourist buses. But even in moments such as those I count my blessings. At least we werent those kids from the "Shittys".

18 comments:

Mansur said...

Good one...but when's the book coming out? But considering we'd have to actually pay for that...

Anonymous said...

"Jarring isnt it. Like when you board a superfast long-distance nonstop bus, and 5 minutes into the trip you suddenly want to pee "

ROTFL

I thought i had problems trying to get northies to add the H in my name :D

- sujatHa

Anonymous said...

:)
Sudden, you oughta have a weekly syndicated column somewhere, a la Jug Suraiya.
- Samson and Dilaila?? :)) And err .. from what little I remember from Sunday school, isn't it spelt "Delilah"?!
- Do you a brother/sister? Most siblings in Kerala end up as Mini, Sini and Binny. Or Seena, Meena, Beena. Or Jithu, Jinu and Jincy. :)
- Next time you come down to Kerala, observe this interesting phenomenon - buses in Cochin don't have numbers - they have *names*, e.g. Sangeetha, Aishwarya, etc emblazoned on these huge boards across their fronts. If I have to get to Marine Drive from my colony in Cochin, I have to hitch a "ride" on Ushamol, Minikutty or Saritha. :)

Hitanshu said...

LOL Dude!!


You make for good morning reading. Anyhow, I notice alot of "overweight" references in your texts. If its such a issue, get rid of it man!

You ever tried Atkins!?
Hitanshu

Anonymous said...

My first time at your blog. :D. Boy am I gonna come back. I always thought that Mallus are good writers. You prove my point. :D

---Elysia
(http://elysia.rediffblogs.com)

Anonymous said...

eda...methinks u've been watching too much of dr strangelove or how i learned...

cool stuff tho'

Aslan said...

1) Shakeela is not Mallu; she's Tam.
[Ow! Ow! Stop hitting me, you Sunnys! :D The truth is often painful!]
2) She's dead! [Experience "fast succession of emotions" here:
Ok! That will do. Stop weeping, will ya? ;)]
3) Elysia, to concretise your theory about good Mallu writers,
check out my blog at snkutty.blogspot.com :D
4) Kuts is my nickname [fortunately!]
5) n' hey Din, great work dude! Lookin' fwd to reading about Ninoo ;)

Aslan said...

As for Dilaila, thats the Mallu version, am I right? Like Peter=>Pathrose, Matthew=>Mathai, Bob=>Boban, Money=>Mani et al ;)
Thanx for the Gostats link. You should look for a mail counter, 'cuz your "Why we don't get any" post is doing the rounds in Infosys [Bangalore, Mysore, Chennai], Satyam [Bangalore]... n' MindTree now ;)

Anonymous said...

Nice post again :-) i think i will be a regular here. btw my cousin Gautam 'mangu' Kamath is your classmate at A.

Prithesh
http://prithesh.blogdrive.com

Anonymous said...

Vurry, vurrry fenny [or should I say 'Very Sunny'] monnae Sidin. You are still the jembing mengee that I knew in college, only now you seem to be funnier! Will keep coming back...

~saand

Anonymous said...

...and did u know about the gal called Shalvi ( pronounced ...shall-wee) ..she ended up getting married to Vishal ( pronounced we-shall)
A Cynic in Wonderland
http://solitarycynic.rediffblogs.com/

Anonymous said...

It has been a while since I came this blog. Pretty cool stuff, man. Yeah, mallus are the worst baby namers: I am part of the anju, benju, tintu kids....
But, sidin is pretty cool. So is sangeetha..

Anonymous said...

!

Anonymous said...

I may be the only leddies commenting on this article. Heck, I may also be the only non tam / mallu. But I am far away in a land down under, completely bereft of any southies, so the emotion is overwhelming. Being a big girl myself (read that any way you like!), I recall wistfully the many many times I was told I look like someone who should be on the cover of Grihashobha. Good work!

Anonymous said...

Nice presentation style...

Anonymous said...

ROTFLMAO!! This is so funny. Well my surname's "Chuni". When girls my age used to dream of prince charming, I used to dream of a Prince Charming (Even a normal guy would've done actually) with a normal human-ish surname. :P

Anonymous said...

Maan, you are priceless, do print a book entitled "Encyclopedia of Mallu names" or simbly (note the 'b') "Mallu Digest"

:-) keep it up!

AmitK

Anonymous said...

Great article...the part talking about the malloo fascination with meaningless names is hilarious and so true!!! Worth the read!!!