You named me What!?

Nicknames are most essential in life, more valuable than names.


Whats life without having a nickname? Sometimes the nickname sticks for life. The person is only called by it through out their life. There are so many instances in our life when we don't remember the real name of the person as we are so used to called the person by a nickname. It creates a bond within people. Nicknames are fond names, we do not give them to people we dislike. Other than in circumstances when friends secretly give nicknames to people, so that only they know who they are talking about.

A philosophical view says: What's in a name? Yet our identity is through our name. A given name at birth is something we have no control on. But a nickname is something we do have a say. Like my given name Anupama, all my friends, family and colleagues call me Anu. Only one who ever called me by full name was my mom and my childhood friend. When they would say my full name meant i had done something for which i was going to be scolded or penalised. Well my nickname is just short form of my given name. Think about a person having Satvinder as her / his name, and nickname is lucky. Now this is something very prevalent in North India. We can have a good laugh but then Satvinder all his/ her life will be called lucky. I have a friend whose name is Harvinder and all my life i have called him Harry. Never knew till the advent of Facebook that his real name was Harry. There are so many instances of this.

Some nicknames can make you smile, while some can scandalise you. There are times we keep nicknames for our loved one's on our phone, while we do not call them by this name. I recently had a shock moment when one of my friends husband has put her name in his phone as " Hitleerrr" now this was a complete shocker to me, as my friend is an easy going person. This made me think about why such a name for her!! Love has no reasoning and i guess their fun moment is this. Even though in europe people will look down at the name given to her by her spouse.
While we were at this conversation of what her name is on his phone, another friend told us that she knows someone who has put "Do not answer" as name for his wife. Yet when she calls he picks up. This got me seriously baffled and in splits of laughter. I would love to go through all my friends / strangers anyone who would let me see what name they have given to their spouses / partners.

I love the idea of a nickname. It's so personal and affectionate. There is fun and lightness when people are talking ; what's life without a few laughs ? But on a serious note it makes me think about where are we going with this fast moving world. Our ideas and way of life has evolved and even our love nicknames some rather old and some very creative stick out at times like sore thumbs.

Is their a direct connection about our relationship / feelings with the names we give to our loved one's? Especially in the smart phone age, many people give nicknames to their loved one's. This has seriously made me think about our mindset to how we perceive our relation.

We say that jokingly we have put this name ; Jokes are good and fun, but then there is a an underlying subconscious message which we are also projecting. Have we come in an age where we have to Rethink about how we give nicknames?

Relationships are like bubbles, handle them with care.

Out of Control

"Your urge to control life, Controls you"

Are we all crazy? Or are we Geniuses? 

No one knows , but we all have certain traits which can be deemed either. 

Too much clutter and noise is what we have in our life and ultimately we give in to whatever is pushing us over the edge. Some become great artists,  while some wither their life away. Circumstances, choices, oppurtunities, lady luck … what ever one wants to call it … somewhere we push our own boundaries.

Watch people and one realizes , how fragile we all are. We play the game of involving people in our decisions, this way whatever the circumstances we feel we have people along with us. Once someone has approved our decision , the game begins. Our vulnerability ensures we hide behind our stories.  We create memories by fabricating stories, we start living in these fabricated stories which we then call a fulfilled life or sometimes we say life has been unfair to us. Either way we create these illusions and then we have someone else to blame.

When did all this happen? When did we start imagining our lives, and started living a lie? Imagination the milestone of our evolution, we created, stories that have made us who we are today. When did we spiral out of control with our stories?

Every person has a unique signature, we are all different, yet our society wants us all to be same for a common objective. Our conditioning over millennia has been to blend in. We have been trained to be social animals, yet one finds peace when one comes to terms by being alone. Truth is,  we come alone in this world and we go alone from this world. The moments we are alive is what we have been trained not for our betterment, but to blend in and be social animals. 

"Animals", in the end we are just animals as per our society. We started teaching control your mind, let the mind not control you. We were taught desires are bad, we are taught to be forgiving, loving , compassionate , helpful to others... list goes on. Why are individuals targeted with these messages all their life? Why did we form governments? What role does a government vs individual plays in society ? So many lies and false hopes which have been given in name of being in control. We crib about bad governances, yet if we are asked to follow rules we are first to jump the boat to find our own way.

Survival of the Fittest has been our mantra. We have been trained with this ideology, yet we have conflicting ideologies all our life. Our ever expanding population, spiralling out of control is raising enough issues for us to rethink about our ideologies and way of life. Equal treatment, equal rights, equality as a whole is what the world has been chanting, yet the gap between haves and haves not is widening. We say few individuals for their own gains are exploiting the world resources. My question: Are we all not responsible? We all have numerous needs, desires and we collectively are using the resources with our new purchasing power. So if few are exploiting for their business purpose is due to the spiralling population and more humans needs to be met. 

Why should a capitalist give away his wealth to the poor? Why do we propagate to give alms to needy? Why are we not teaching people to work and earn a living? Why are we not holding the so called elected governments to work on this? 

We have spiralled out of control in every aspect of our lives. This is just the tip, as more populated this planet becomes, more out of control we will become. We cannot control anything other than pave the way of our destiny. Hard work and updating our skills will help us to have a good life. We are not animals, and we need to Rethink and Unlearn to let go of our conditioning. 

Don't feed fish , teach people how to fish. This is the only way to survive and have a quality of life for everyone.

As rightly said by Ratan Tata, " All of us do not have equal talents , yet all of us have equal opportunity to develop our talent".

Life is fun, if you let go of controlling it.