NAMESAKE: The Story of my Name ....
" Whats in a Rose that we call a Rose".
This is a quote from William Shakespeare's Romio and Juliet.
""A rose by any other name would smell as sweet"
Well ,ask me , Name Does Matter!
With an almost Unique name " SEMMAL " in a more than 100Billion+ Population in India or rather the Universe,
In which case I don't know the count as there might be some aliens out there too [ The last time I googled , there was one other guy in my name , yet to meet one in my life though!] .
Many of my friends are wondering What does it mean.
Lets go back to early 1980's for the same.
It was a vibrant day. A couple went to admit their kid in a small school in the suburbs of Chennai. The Principal asked the Father to fill the forms for the nomenclature!
Well , I call it nomenclature as that's how our school system categorizes everything ! From Students to Botanical / Zoological names! and just entities to make money either way .That's another topic.
Coming back to our Story , The Father filled in "Semmal "
The Principal reads the name and her eye brows went in different angles.
The proud Father explains , It is Semmal , not " Samuel" as it was initially read as Samuel [ Being a Christian School they probably perceived that way and may be it was misspelt!].
Semmal means , " Exceller" or " Somone who excels".
Well at least my Father Dreamt of it!
The mother was taken for surprise. Apparently , Semmal was Born after 9 years after his Sister. The mother prayed Lord Balaji and wanted his son to be christened after him.
My appa was a great negotiator. How about this...
" In school and for the world , He is Semmal , and for you and family , it is Balaji".
Amma took the deal.
So , It usually goes like this ,
" Semmal , Appa pesaren " when my appa calls ...
or a long crooning " Balajeeeeeeeeee" From Thatha when he wants me to open the door or a " Balagggiii..." when my amma was irritated for my mischievousness..
* Time passed by , The name became a icebreaker or Conversation Starter as always, wherever I go.
They start with " Samuel " or sometimes to the Worst case of " Semmann" meaning red sand. Thank God my appa did not hear it from someone.
I was usually patient and persistent to correct it ,but sometimes I used to lose my patience.
* One of those days when I lost patience , happened to be the day when appa Overheard me. I think it was around the time when I started working after college.
I was talking to some call center person and was trying to register my name for a credit Card I suppose. The repeated , need to say corrections on my spelling made me irksome over the call center person . Feel sorry about that now.
Looks like appa was so frustrated when he Overheard the conversation , I still remember vividly , he kept a green letter on my desk. It outlined a clear process how to Change my name in the gazette and in the Certificates.
He was upset and talked to my amma about it too.
I told amma that , I am and always will be proud of my name , I was shouting for a different reason.
Wish I had told that to appa on face. Life's like that...or thats how I pacify myself now.
He had reasons for it.. It was not just a random name or from name books . He was an ardent fan of tamil Literature and took the reference for the name from Sangam Tamil literature. Infact he had contacted linguists in terms of Framing the name as " CHEmmal" or "SEmmal". He was not a great fan of his name and wanted his son's name to have an essence of hope and life in it. I very well knew it too....
The name as expected was not changed. Time wheel moved on....
* I came to US for higher studies . The call center story started again.
But I think this time it was not because of my name , as any name " Gangadharan" or " Ram " or " adusupulli" it all means the same to them.
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