No CS reservation !

I finally got a chance to get a ride on the Bandra-Worli sea link...unfortunately photos aren't allowed, so this post is all text!
It was quite a scenic drive- honestly knowing the route, I expected it to be so. But, the best part of the entire journey was seeing the board that said 'Rajiv Gandhi Sea Link'. Ahh ! for once no chattrapati shivaji stuff ! I agree CS may be a hero of sorts for Maharashtra....but then again he had no connection with the city of Bombay...so it irritates me each time I see his and his familys' names all over the place in the city. Even if one were to give me the whole local argument, I would still say that there have been enough of achievers from Bombay over the years that have made a difference to the country. A road or 2 named after the members of the family is fine I guess, but major places like the International airport, the Bandra Worli SL, major railway stations and major road junctions should have names of people that have made a difference to either the city of Bombay or the country. For eg. I have always believed that the Intl. airport should be Jamshedji Tata Intl airport or a Mahatma Gandhi Intl. airport or something on those lines.
You might say 'whats in a name?' and you would probably be right. But in the case of Bombay, it is simply another way of forcing upon us a culture that isn't ours.
Seeing a major bridge named after 'Rajiv Gandhi' in Bombay was indeed satisfying beyond measure- no more any CS reservation for major monuments, roads etc.

Afresh

Kinda reviving my travel-photo blog
http://ramlaltravel.blogspot.com/

A new beginning

Well, 7rrml has graduated with 2 names and there shall be no more of WIMWI for Ram Lal.Yes, Ram Lal is done with WIMWI. Convocation over on the 28th and he leaves for Bombay in about 2 hours. Its easily been the best 2 years of his life, but alas all good things must come to an end. He is gonna miss being on the job, living in Unnees and every other aspect of life here.

But Ram Lal does begin a new life with Nestle in about 2 weeks. Whether or not he will still be able to remain in touch with friends and 'family' at WIMWI, he does not know but he knows that he shall come back at every given opportunity to relive all those cherished moments out here.

Ram Lal is signing out from IIMA.

All the Names

Let me begin by telling you my real name. Its Riaan Mark Rodrigues. Mark is my middle name and is the name of one of the evangelists( 4 gospel writers). Rodrigues is a Portuguese surname which literally means "Son of Rodrigo" (Patronymic). Riaan is my first name. As for its meaning, well I was told as a boy by my mother that it is named after a Persian King(yes my parents decided to give me a Persian name as my mother also has one....actually my parents had come down to "Riaan" and "Rhys" but my uncle Robin felt that people would keep calling me "Greece" !!), which was really not a satisfactory answer ! So before my IIM interviews I remember trying to find out if there was a meaning. So I scrapped all the active "Riaan"s on orkut to find out if they knew the meaning. Unfortunately just one sort of did. Apparently "Riaan" is also a derivative of "Aryan". Anyway so that's all about MY name !!

Needless to say, Riaan Mark Rodrigues as a combo is very intriguing to most people. A lot of people have a problem pronouncing my name. My first name for instance has been turned into a "Ryan", "Rian", "Rehan" etc and well, lets not get into pronunciations...I had a south Indian professor once who would call me "raiyan" !!A lot of people prefer to call me "Rodrigues"...given the apparent complex pronunciation of my first name....but then there are those that have trouble with all the names....I remember this one occasion during my school days when I had to go to some public school to take an Olympiad exam or something. When the time cam for the supervisor to take attendance, he called everyone's names....but at mine he stopped..." Rai...Ree....errrmmm rodree...rod...rodddd no 23 are you there ?"...yup i was number 23 that day !!

So I spent my life being called all sorts of names...yes without actually being insulted !! as for the derivatives plenty but most came later...in school it was just "Rod Dick" !! yeah....and to make things worse ...my first hotmail id was riaanrod7@hotmail.com, the implications of which didnt hit me at that time till one day someone came up to me and said.."Riaanrod7 huh..really?? 7?"...so the names and their derivatives kept coming till i came to WIMWI. That's when things just exploded !

Now on registration day in the first year, I was asked to fill up my name as it appeared on my certificates. In Bombay university, our names appeared in this format surname-name-middle-father-mother. Why they needed all these names I don't know, but they did, and to make things worse, the PGP office registered me with all 5 names rather than trying to make sense of it. My name tag had all 5 names, so did the attendance sheet and so everytime the prof decided to take the roll call, it was a riot at my turn...some called me by my first name, others by my surname some wanted to read out all 5. I had to shout present really loudly before they reached the second name !!, still do infact ! Furthermore, the computer centre also refused to rationalise my name and I was too lazy to sort it out. At wimwi ur email and dbab(internal chat) ids are year-name-Initial of Surname. So I should have been 7riaanr but Noooooo !! I became 7rrml !!yes 7rrml !! they missed out my mother's name ! So 7rrml became the joke of wimwi...and quite frankly I like the name 7rrml (I mean its different and yes I like to be called 7rrml and not rrml)...but it was a big problem for the previous placecom. The dbab id is in some way a primary key and is used often to sort of people's names. So in my case they had to sort out a Rodrigues Riaan Mark Leonard Rayna with a 7rrml !! definitely was a big pain !! oh and I almost forgot, the office also mispelt my name as Rian !!....so from 7rrml came rrml and sometimes I would even have the PGP office calling me mlrr. The batch even made it mltr (which is incidentally also one of my fav bands). The PGP continues to blunder on this front..sometimes the attendance sheet has the other 4 names with my name Riaan reduced to an initial !, at times there isn't enough space and Rodrigues is made rodrig ! For those of you who read my blog, you would know I have yet another name ...Chuchcha Singh !! yes my dorm name (explained in an earlier post)..and from Chuchcha Singh came another derivative...Chooch !...well that's it for now...those are all my names !!

If some of you haven't noticed, the number 7 keeps repeating ....well, when I decided upon my email ids (hotmail and current yahoo )...it was chosen because as a football fan the number 7 holds a special place. A lot of my fav players wear that number and so I used it in riaanrod7@hotmail.com and futebol_riaan7@yahoo.co.in. As for the IIMA id, the number 7 denotes the year that I joined...uncanny isn't it (I am also born in July)....so I figured that Seven should be the name of one of my kids...yeah seven. For those of you who watch Seinfeld, you would know that George also thinks really highly of this name ! As for a middle name ...was thinking something exotic and cricket related(the whole Indian connection)..so I came up with "White Lightning" !! yes one of my fav fast bowlers and a native American (Indian) name !! So there it is ...my Kids name will be Seven "White Lightning" Rodrigues !! The tradition shall live on !

Trip Home

OK..just to summarise all the good stuff that I did when I went home this time...

I ate...

Pork
Tongue
Mutton
Chicken
Bombay Duck
Other Fish
Brain...


...Life is good back home !! :):)