(what?) My name is.. (who?)
My name is.. fricky dicky Slim Shady
I wish it were that easy. Easy as slim shady. You know how it is... Especially with people from South India.. We always find a way to screw up our last name, surname, family name (whaat???) and given name, first name etc.. Typically, South Indians, especially those from Tamil Nadu, go by one name (like the Brazilians.. :-) For example, Suresh, Ramesh and Karthik et al., and usually your dad's first name's first letter becomes your initial and that forms your name. In my case, J. Subash (J for Jayaraman and you may have noticed, the right spelling "Subhash" is not used in my name -- Another by-product of being from Tamil Nadu.
For the longest time, I went by J. Subash. Around 7th or 8th grade, my eldest brother thought of using our family's gotra "Bharadwaja" as surname to all of us in the family... so, my name became J. Subash Bharadwaj. So, in my high school mark sheets etc., my official name is J. Subash Bharadwaj. Then came the time in my third year in College to apply for my passport. Here comes the real trouble. The passport application had spaces for family name, surname and given names.. Now, that is worse than opening a pandora's box.. you never know what you end up being called the rest of your life. I'd have preferred to be called Subash Jayaraman Bharadwaj but now I go by Subash Bharadwaj Jayaraman.. which isn't too bad.
I first got my passport in August 1996 and it was valid for 10 years.. How quickly time has flown by. I am right now sitting in NJ at my buddy's place on my way to the Indian Consulate in NYC. Once again, the passport application form got me. All the mumbo-jumbo about surnames and family names got me confused but the age old trick of seeing what batman has done in his application came through..
While on the topic of filling out the Passport application, they needed 2 forms of proof of residence in U.S. Here we go! I never got a Driver's license and my state ID expired a while ago and I never bothered to renew it. The electric bill is in Batman's name and I share a line on Batman's cellular plan.. Now, What i got is lease agreement and Bank statement to show these folks in the consulate that I have been living in State college, PA for the past few years.. Let's see how that works out...
Monday, July 17, 2006
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3 comments:
Don't make your routine "The consulate should just call up Sportscafe to establish your residency requirements" joke... you cheeky bastards..
Why r u plagiarising Totti's style of commenting first on your own post ?
That name think is really tricky. I think they should standardise 2 initials and a firt name...no last name ...no middle name...so u can just be called JB Subhash etc. For people who possess only one initial (like yours truly), they should allow one constant lowercase dummy (x,y, z)...so I can call myself Rx Arun :)
In class 10th, my class teacher unilaterally decided that I don't deserve a middle name, so she struck it off my boards forms and since then I'm officially just Mudit Shekhawat, while everyone else in my family is Something Singh Shekhawat. I've made my peace with it though. The 'Singh' doesn't suit my personality anyway. :)
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