29 Mar 2006

What's in a name

By now most people are aware of the fact that an 11-year old boy named Hari has sued Naukri.com for releasing an advertisement where the name 'Hari' is expanded into 'Hitler, Arrogant, Rascal, Idiot'. Apparently our 11-year-old has been called 'Hitler' by his schoolmates and is going through intolerable grief. To make things better for Hari, his dad has helped him sue Naukri.com for Rs. 10 Million. I will not comment on obvious points like how his dad must have an excellent understanding of child psychology to realise that a 10 mn-lawsuit is just the method to handle teasing at school. Nor will I comment on how Hari, when he grows up will probably be sanctioned American citizenship immediately since when I last heard that was the only place where people filed lawsuits almost as ridiculous. Instead I will dwell upon this other loser kid who went through a similar trauma thanks to her name.
About fourteen years ago a Tamil movie was made on the theme of two stepbrothers. It was a major hit thanks to the excellent songs, avant garde lighting (atleast at that time), terse dialogues and great casting. It was watched by almost everybody who could speak the language. There was one minor scene, which escaped the attention of all but a little girl's classmates. It was the culmination of the comedy track, which involved a car driver helping his elderly employer to get laid. The duo manages to track down a call girl to do the job. And guess what the name of her character was? You are right. It was the same as the little girl's. Of course her classmates were too young to understand what exactly were the services expected from this hot looking lady who appeared in the scene. But they certainly knew that the homely heroine was not called by this name. (In a city like Chennai, every 9-year-old wants to be the homely heroine and not the sexy siren). So for a week the little girl had atleast one person chant out her name in the same tone of gleeful anticipation used in the movie.
The little girl was of course me (fairly obvious wasn't it?). If there is anyone to blame for my not having 10 mn in my bank account, it is me. I believe Hari was sent a box of chocolates as a token of apology by the company and the ad agency. Our little Hari has however rejected it by quickly using his mental arithmetic skills to figure out how many boxes of chocolates he can buy with so much money.
Sigh. I wish I had atleast got some chocolates.

2 comments:

Entropy said...

okay how was the name said - was it ooooh xyz ? or ummmm xyz ?

how could you have been suicidal enought o put this on a blog and tell me about the blog ?

Prabhu said...

Aneeeeethaaaaaaaaaaa?

And Hari's father suing naukri.com made it big in the internet, and everyone would have thought "ridiculous".