Pet names

Do you know where Mr.Chopra lives? Nopes, I answered and the stranger who had spoilt my book reading session left. He must have just covered a few paces when realization dawned and I opened the door again and yelled back at him "he lives on the third floor". Surprised, he mumbled a feeble thank you and changed his course to go upstairs. I am sure he must have thought I was a moron but only I knew the problem. I had never known Chopra uncle by his name, for me he has always been 'Daewoo' uncle for he was the first person in our society to have bought the huge "Daewoo Cielo" back in the 90's when marutis ruled the roads (they still do).

Pet names - the ones that your parents give you or the ones you acquire over a period of time because of your ability or foolishness always stay with you, come what may! Traditions make parents name their child as "Vyankatesh" and practicality/fondness changes the name to Venky. My childhood, I remember at least 10 sonu(s) and equal raju(s) in my society. To complete the pet name bouquet there were others like chikku, minti, munni, monu, dinky, tillu, babu,etc. Every time an aunt called my friend chikku, she would cringe but answer and every time we called her that she would throw a tantrum and go away reminding us her real name. Parent's too acquired a pet-name as a result of their kid. I mean Mr.Walia was never known by his name but always as chikku's papa. These are pet names as a result of fondness or as some general rule because the names were too long.

But there were others that were acquired because of a habit. For example we named Manish 'hanky' after his constantly overflowing nose and his eagerness to wipe it off even when he was supposed to pick up a catch. Debashish became 'ducky' after his amazing capability to imitate 'Uncle Scrooge'. Nidhi became 'popo' after her famous rickshaw driver act in one of the society plays (She had imitated the rickshaw's horn extremely well). Mandar was nicknamed 'Dhonya'(long time back....no way related to M.S.Dhoni) because he would either hit a six or get out (‘dho deta tha’).

I once knew of pandit uncle and his nameplate read (Sirish Patwardhan (panditji))...for everyone knew him as panditji because he knew every shloak, mantra in the Hindu tradition and was the lead man in all traditional activities. Garage wale uncle, I can still point his house and tell you his whole family tree but ask me about Mr. Surendran Nair, and I would probably tell you I don’t know him. I too gave the weirdest pet names to people and they too readily accepted it. BCS aunty (she had filled my BCS form), Dabba uncle (he had made my school dabbas when my parents had to urgently go out of station), Line wali didi (because the first time I met her was in a queue and had fought with her), the list is just endless.

Times have changed and I am no longer in touch with many of these old folks but I am amazed how the memory of their pet names never fails me. The name immediately rings a bell and brings back a gust of memories. And I guess it will always be so :)

Probably nothing summarizes my fondness for pet names than this line from Jhumpa Lahiri's Namesake - "Pet names are a persistent remnant of childhood, a reminder that life is not always so serious, so formal, so complicated". Perfect, isn’t it?