The below post is from one of those e-mails that keep getting forwarded because they are interesting. It landed in our mailbox this morning courtesy of our New Jersey sardar friend (yeah, the same guy who once promised us an Incredible India tourism DVD and sent us a porn DVD…only a Sikh would do that 😉 ). Anyway, full credit goes to the author whoever she/he/it is.
“The Travails of Single South Indian men of conservative upbringing” or “Why we don’t get any…”
Yet another action packed weekend in Mumbai, full of fun, frolic and introspection. I have learnt many things. For example having money when none of your friends have any is as good as not having any. And after spending much time in movie theatres, cafes and restaurants I have gathered many insights into the endless monotony that is the love life of south Indian men. What I have unearthed is most disheartening. Disheartening because comprehension of these truths will not change our status anytime soon.
However there is also cause for joy. We never stood a chance anyway. What loads the dice against virile, gallant, well educated, good looking, sincere mallus and tams? (Kandus were once among us, but Bangalore has changed all that.)
Our futures are shot to hell as soon as our parents bestow upon us names that are anything but alluring. I cannot imagine a more foolproof way of making sure the child remains single till classified advertisements or that maternal uncle in San Francisco thinks otherwise.
Name him “Parthasarathy Venkatachalapthy” and his inherent capability to combat celibacy is obliterated before he could even talk. He will grow to be known as Partha.
Before he knows, his smart, seductively named northy classmates start calling him Paratha. No woman in their right minds will go anyway near poor Parthasarathy. His investment banking job doesn’t help either. His employer loves him though. He has no personal life you see.
By this time the Sanjay Singhs and Bobby Khans from his class have small businesses of their own and spend 60% of their lives in discos and pubs. The remaining 40% is spent coochicooing with leather and denim clad muses in their penthouse flats on Nepean Sea Road. Business is safely in the hands of the Mallu manager.
After all with a name like Blossom Babykutty he cant use his 30000 salary anywhere. Blossom gave up on society when in school they automatically enrolled him for Cookery Classes. Along with all the girls.
Yes my dear reader, nomenclature is the first nail in a coffin of neglect and hormonal pandemonium. In a kinder world they would just name the poor southern male child and throw him off the balcony. “Yes appa we have named him Goundamani…” THUD. Life would have been less kinder to him anyway.
If all the women the Upadhyays, Kumars, Pintos and, god forbid, the Sens and Roys in the world have met were distributed amongst the Arunkumars, Vadukuts and Chandramogans we would all be merry casanovas with 3 to 4 pretty things at each arm. But alas it is not to be. Of course the south Indian women have no such issues. They have names which are like sweet poetry to the ravenous northie hormone tanks.
Picture this: “Welcome, and this is my family. This is my daughter Poorni (what a sweet name!!) and my son Ponnalagusamy (er..hello..)..” Cyanide would not be fast enough for poor Samy. Nothing Samy does will help him. He can pump iron, drive fast cars and wear snazzy clothes, but against a braindead dude called Arjun Singhania he has as much chance of getting any as a Benedictine Monk in a Saharan Seminary.
Couple this with the other failures that have plagued our existence. Any attempt at spiking hair with gel fails miserably. In an hour I have a crown of greasy, smelly fibrous mush.
My night ends there. However the northy just has to scream “Wakaw!!!” and you have to peel the women off him to let him breathe. In a disco while we can manage the medium hip shake with neck curls, once the Bhangra starts pumping we are as fluid as cement and gravel in a mixer.
Karan Kapoor or Jatin Thapar in the low cut jeans with chaddi strap showing and see through shirt throws his elbows perfectly, the cynosure of all attention. The women love a man who digs pasta and fondue.
But why do they not see the simple pleasures of curd rice and coconut chutney? When poor Senthilnathan opens his tiffin box in the office lunch room his female coworkers just dissappear when they see the tamarind rice and poppadums. The have all rematerialised around Bobby Singh who has ordered in Pizza and Garlic bread. (And they have the gall to talk of foreign origin.)
How can a man like me brought up in roomy lungis and oversized polyester shirts ever walk the walk in painted on jeans (that makes a big impression) and neon yellow rib hugging t shirts? All I can do is don my worn “comfort fit” jeans and floral shirt. Which is pretty low on the “Look at me lady” scale, just above fig leaf skirt and feather headgear a la caveman, and a mite below Khakhi Shirt over a red t shirt and baggy khakhi pants and white trainers a la Rajni in “Badsha”.
Sociologically too the tam or mallu man is severely sidelined. An average tam stud stays in a house with, on average, three grandparents, three sets of uncles and aunts, and over 10 children. Not the ideal atmosphere for some intimacy and some full throated “WHOSE YOUR DADDY!!!” at the 3 in the morning. The mallu guy of course is almost always in the gulf working alone on some onshore oil rig in the desert. Rheumatic elbows me thinks.
Alas dear friends we are not just meant to set the nights on fire. We are just not built to be “The Ladies Man”. The black man has hip hop, the white man has rock, the southie guy only has idlis and tomato rasam or an NRI account in South Indian Bank Ernakulam Branch.
Alas as our destiny was determined in one fell swoop by our nomenclature, so will our future be. A nice arranged little love story. But the agony of course does not end there.
On the first night, as the stud sits on his bed finally within touching distance and whispers his sweet desires into her delectable ear, she blushes, turns around and whispers back “But amma has said only on second Saturdays…”
In one last effort here we attractive young men have taken on alter egos
which may interest some of you women:
1. Gautam Kumar Raja, will now be known as Joshua Perreira
2. Sidin Sunny Vadukut, henceforth will be known as Dev Chopra
3. Ashwath Venkataraman is now Vijay Desai
4. Sudarshan Ramakrishnan no more, from now he is Barath Sharma
5. Gautam Chandrasekharan will now respond to Alyque Shah
Do mail me any time for a meeting with one of the above. One week notice if Italian or Chinese food is involved, or if the individual is expected to dance…
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Good one.
I read this article a few years back, and I wondered how South Indian guys come to terms with their parents’ folly 🙁
Then, I was looking for some North Indian names of similar kind. I realized that Parminder or Ramandeep are not any better than Subbaswamy or Anbzhagan in this sense. It probably has more to do with the generation. Nowadays, I find that a lot of southies have trendy names such as Ashwin, Rahul, Anirudh, etc, at least in the cities. I fear we may have already seen the last of Krishnamurthy and Gopalaswamy. Same perhaps goes in other urban parts of India.
In fact, finding names for babies has become a big headache for Indian parents, who want a name for their baby that is not owned by anyone in the radius of 10000 km. There are websites to help out the parents (they do not yet satisfy the 10000 km constraint, though).
Former captain of Indian test cricket team, S.Venkataraghavan, a genial man otherwise, was furious, when, at a dinner hosted for the team in Australia, the host (or someone else) remarked jokingly, that his name rhymed with `Rent a caravan’. Venkataraghavan pointed out that John Inverarity was not a very easy name to pronounce either. So, a trendy name or not, southies always have a ready repartee.
SearchIndia.com Responds:
You write above: I wondered how South Indian guys come to terms with their parents’ folly
Sob, sob, sob. Just wait till you hear our name. Sob, sob, sob. 🙁
Is that email for real ? I mean the names ending with raman, shekaran, ramanujan, sheshan etc etc really sound well. I feel there is no need for alter egos by southie men.
Why are andhraites ignored ? These Telugus have nice sounding sanskritised names with hard-to-pronounce surnames. Kanishka Jagarlapudi, bharath Ghattamaneni etc etc .
SearchIndia.com Responds:
You write above: These Telugus have nice sounding sanskritised names with hard-to-pronounce surnames
Here are some more interesting Telugu names:
* Chinna Kesava Rao Boppineni
* Ramanjaneyulu Vishnumolakala
* Satyanarayana Molakalapudi
* Sitarama Raju Boddapudi
* Anjaneyulu Jagarlamudi
* Akkineni Nageswara Rao
* Garataiah Boggavarapu
* Pitchaiah Joshyula
* Brahmajoshyila Venkateswara Subrahmanyam
* Kakarlapudi Rama Subbaiah
……..
What is the most interesting Telugu name you guys can think of?
Ha ha … Excellent one… being a southie I could realize every bit of it from d heart 🙂 …
Yes not they stopped naming the kids as Rama Supiraminiyan or Abithakujalaambaal. Not only Krish, Rahul, Bharath or ashwin few trendy classic tamil names like Kavin, Ezhil are heard… ofcourse by the middle aged parents who suffered by their ‘venkata subraminian’, madasaamy, kandhasaamy names :).
forget the names, the food… Me and my buddy (a venkata subra…. a tamil brahmin) where staying together and cooking for ourselves… all of a sudden we decided to carry lunch to office… in an office building on mid of san jose, where the lunch room is shared between couple of offices … we used to have sambaar sadham and papadam… some of the americans girls used trail the strange smell and come and look at us (my buddy believes that your hand both sides should have sambar and rice mix spreadedup upto the wrist) and have a scary look at us animals… :)) … we never care.. you know a typical southie.. licks whole of palm and the back to taste the full of sambaar …:)
I can write a full story like the above one on how it becomes unfair for us even in desi parties where the northie guys don even spare the southie gals… we just used to settle with a beer in a corner.. or occassionally dance in the dark with ourselves 🙂 ….
SearchIndia.com Responds:
You write above: in an office building on mid of san jose, where the lunch room is shared between couple of offices … we used to have sambaar sadham and papadam… some of the americans girls used trail the strange smell and come and look at us (my buddy believes that your hand both sides should have sambar and rice mix spreadedup upto the wrist) and have a scary look at us animals… :))
Funny.
We used to take Pulihora (Tamarind rice) to the office occasionally…used to get a few complaints about the smell…But us being us, we used to ask them if they wanted to share our lunch 😉
Here are some mallu names:
Kaarthyayini Ammal
Thankamma
Kunhalikutty
Kunjurosa Vargeese
Kuttyshankaran
Ha, now I know the real reason SI doesn’t reveal his/her/its name. ‘SI’ then must be your initials. May be its Sivakami Iyengar or Sundararajan Iyyaneth or Sambunathan Irunnamani or Sarana-keertha-pavana-mahita-rama-chandran Iswara-namita-raja-kalpa-shravananath. I bet its the last one. This is fun…Lol 🙂
SearchIndia.com Responds:
You forgot the most famous Mallu name of all – Nayantara 😉
Thats her screen name. Her real name is Diana smthing. Too lazy to lookup.
SearchIndia.com Responds:
Diana Mariam Kurien, according to Wiki.
Resul Pookutty.. aiyo kadavulae.. no wonder he ended up a sound geek.
You don’t have to be a Southie to have a name that could give you the blushes.
My friend’s wife keeps getting asked how her parents could tolerate the name Dikshit. You can still not fault her – she is a migrant. A US-born friend has a US-born cousin, who in a fit of inspiration named his elder son Harshit. He was not satisfied with this, so he went a step ahead and named his younger son Hardik. Of course, when the younger son grows up he might enjoy his name.
SearchIndia.com Responds:
Yes, with such a ‘hard’ name the young fella will most definitely have an easy time with the gals (or guys depending on his proclivities) when he grows up. 😉
I used to have a colleague “Richard Byrnes”.. a.k.a Dick Burns
South Indian names have a meaning …rooted in Religion and culture of the respective place ….and lots of reasons for keeping such names …
Few which I know :
My friends call me Sri / Srini …but my mother who is a devotee of Vishnu (Balaji) …and hence the name…Srinivas for me …..always calls me Srinivas …since its an opportunity for her to take her fav god’s name …. so everytime somebody calls …its like invoking God’s name ……this is also one of the reasons why God’s names are popular in South India …
Lets take one more example – In north its “Sri” while in Tamil its Thiru …. Respect for God is a must ….hence the addition of “an” at the end …so you have names like Srinivasan, Raman / sriram , Krishnan , Subramanian ….while in North the “an” is missing …. dont know the reason though ..
Names of God’s are not old , new ,long , short , modern etc etc ….they were the same 5000 yrs back and will continue to remain the same .. Hence they are “evergreen “….
What has happened here is that – we all suffer from inferiority complex …..so we look towards so called superior cultures (based on our perception) and then try to adapt thier ways ….and of course ….we keep downgrading ourselves ….
Paradox here is that we shout from our rooftops that we are proud Indians /Hindus , proud Tamils and yet Tamil Kadavul – Subramanian is a name which is too long …..Murugan is now a old name ….
We should not suffer from any complex and neither should we let such people decide – that our parents have kept a wrong name for us ….
Arasan will get a Arasi , Subramanian will get a Valli Kishen will get a Lajwanti ……Clinton will get a Hillary and Monica while Obama will get …..Be happy …
SearchIndia.com Responds:
As Willivakkam SheshappIyer wrote:
Juliet:
Source: Romeo and Juliet (II, ii, 1-2)
@SI:What is the most interesting Telugu name you guys can think of?
James Bond arrives at Hyderabad Airport and introduces himself: Hi, I am Bond, James Bond.
The guy who came to receive him at the Airport:
“I am Sai… Venkata Sai… Siva Venkata Sai…Laxminarayana Siva Venkata Sai…. Srinivasula Laxminarayana Siva Venkata Sai…Rajasekhara Srinivasula Laxminarayana Siva Venkata Sai…Sitaramanjaneyula Rajasekhara Srinivasula Laxminarayana Siva Venkata Sai …Bommiraju Sitaramanjaneyula Rajasekhara Srinivasula Laxminarayana Siva Venkata Sai..”
Bond just faints.
Author : Unknown, Source : Fwd, Fwd…Chain mail.