Our second name-game...

I was almost 3 when Vidur was born. Well, he was born 'Krita' because noone knew what to call him, and I was already Kriti, so Krita was the painfully obvious, tyically Punjabi, hopelessly narcissist (if you can call it that), low IQ, zero creativity choice you could expect my strange Punjabi family to come up with...
He then went through stage of being called Kaka (which I think is sort of mandatory in all Punjabi families), and then finally, after the naming yagya, got a name fit for civilization.

And there's a story about that too..
Turns out - and all this is as per family lore, no evidence for it but hearsay, and in family matters, I have learnt by experience, most hearsay is as accurate as anything else is likely to be....apart from being more fun to narrate...
Anyways, turns out that the noble priest who had the misfortune to have to pick out a letter for my brother's name - I maintain to this date that the only name fit for my brother is 'Gadha', and the priest probably had to break his oath of truth and honesty etc when he had to keep his hand from choosing the letters G, A, D, H, A ...well, the priest picked out two innocuous letters - A and V.
'Bad choice', said my dad when he heard the news. I am sure he had been attending to some call from the ICU at the time and my mother had had to repeat what the priest chose twice to him. Anyways listen to why he thought it was a bad choice - 'Any name starting with A will be right at the start of the roll call in his class, and V will be the last - what are we to do...he will suffer all his life...'
Wow...how full of concern and love...

Poor mama, she must have viewed tearing her hair out as such an attractive option on hearing these touching words...And I'm sure she had a major role to play in preventing my dad showing the preist what he thought of his letter-choosing prowess (unfortunate actually, because then I would have another of my family annals to talk about).Anyways, the wonderfully resilient and patient person that she is for putting up with my lost scientist-cum-workaholic dad for over 20years, she persevered, and instead of giving in to weird ideas of 'Krita' and 'Happy' and whatever else my folks could have thought of, and choosing to NOT consider the anti-priest approach and pick a nice middle 'M' or 'N' as the letter, she called him Vidur.

'Oh no - thats at the very end...all the examiners will be sick of candidates by the time they reach to interview him...thats a hge disadvantage', frowned Papa (I wasnt there, but I'm sure he did), as he rushed to get to the phone to ask his darling JR how the case was doing. Mama sighed. I think we both wordlessly agreed to take t in the light that Papa was a great man for lookign ahead and foreseeing problems...
And Vidur soon got a new name - Anant.
And he was Anant Vidur Puri - living up to the family tradition of all guys having a middle name...living upto the priest's choice, Mama happy because she'd chosen names that were sufficiently rare, and Papa, as usual, whining because now Vidur would have to give all vivae first, and he would get grilled to death...

Of course, there was the problem that Vidur got shortened to Vidhur...and that in hindi means a widow...unfortunate...but we loved Vidhur too....and then there was Vidu...which means 'moon'...which is ok except that its for girls...which was ok while he was a kid...but now, at 17, he has major issues with it...obviously.....and these dats, he is 'Vidur yaar'...because he is almost 6feet tall, and NOT thin and tall, but pretty big all around... and Vidur is too small for a giant like him....anyways we didn't mind any of it...because used in the right situation, it was always just ideal for my brother...maybe because I didnt know what Vidhur or Vidu really meant till I was around 12...and by then, Vidur was more Vidur than anything else, so couldn't start trying to change it...

We did get some damage control done at school, where he was always Anant...and ofcourse, Anant whenever Mama was scolding him...or whenever Mama wanted to call him urgently..Vidu would just not have the effect of stopping him eating mud-ladoos that Anant would have...

Anyway, teenage came...an all-boys school ensured that Anant Vidur Puri became AVP in no time. And boy, does he love 'AVP'. The hero that he is, he thinks it sparkles of attitude and masculinity. Whatever.

And the more his person takes the final touches that will define his character, I see his name come true - literally - infinite intelligence, fried in oil....