Showing posts with label Sharma. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sharma. Show all posts

Northies in My Life

North of the Vindhyas is North for us Southies. And no, this is not a rant, but just a fond recounting of the Sharmas, Sinhas and Srivastavas-not to forget the Dwivedis, Trivedis and Chaturvedis, and of course the Mishras, Agarwals and Gargs.

Sheetal Garg is a sweet Haryanvi who studied at IMT Nagpur, and joined a leading bank. We also had some Gargs as neighbours when I was growing up (in the South). Alok Srivastava was my friend, philosopher, guide through the Hyderabad days at engineering, and in the land of milk and honey (and Trump-life's sweet AND sour!).

Shatakshi Tripathi is a friend I made on facebook, as we never faced each other at IIM Indore. Neeraj Dwivedi was a colleague at Kozhikode (go ahead, pronounce it!). Saumya Sharma was my super-efficient academic associate, and Anjali Sharma is a student.

The Jhas have also been omni-present, as have the Sinhas (I assume most of them are from Bihar). Meghna Sinha and I have a Mutual Admiration Society going since I met her at Nagpur and then in Delhi. I also had a classmate, Sanjay Sinha, in sixth standard, and we called him Tingu.

Ok, the Mishras. Rajhans and Abhishek are just two, current colleagues. Anushka is a former student and friend, and a winner of my nice DP award a couple of times.

Kiran Shah and Siraj Siddiqui were Gujju classmates at IIMB, and Harish Chaudhary, Kusum Ailawadi and Sudhir Goel were a few other Northies there. Ankita Saboo (now Joshi) and Ishita Modi were students at IMT.

Some rare names also figure, like Bhalavat, or Thapliyal-Sneha is a colleague- and not so rare ones, like Singh. Divya Singh is an example. Roopali Saxena was a student at Vignana Jyoti Hyderabad. Nikita Chaturvedi of the vedic traditions, and Madhulika Gaur of Aligarh are the others I recall, and Parul Kashyap Thakur, who writes a terrific blog. Of course, the Punjabis are there too, whom I alluded too in an earlier blog, like Aman Chawla and Sonia Arora, students from different institutes.

Surnames

Surnames (feminists may prefer to call them family names, as the sur may be considered a slur) are varied, and this is an incisive (!) analysis of my favourite ones.

Smith, or its variant, Psmith, used by Wodehouse. These also occur in various colours, like Black, but to the best of my knowledge, not Purple.

Sharma, which could be the Indian equivalent, as it is found in every corner; sometimes the 'h' goes into hiding (out of sharm?) and it turns into a Sarma.

Goodenough- if he's good enough for Priety Zinta, who am I to complain?

Patil, also comes with variants, usually prefixes such as Kolte or Butte..even Dangat.

Suzuki, a family name that changed the way families in India pereceived private transport. Used to be driven by another surname, (Hamara) Bajaj. Wheels within wheels, did you say?

Bandookwala, with its cousins Jalnawala, Sodabottleopenerwala, Screwwala, ...

Karmarkar which is literally Do-die-do if you split it up.

Walker, which is the name assumed by The Phantom when he walks the streets of town like an ordinary man..

Some names trigger dialogues. The name Jain reminds me of the Tarzan dialogue- Me, Tarzan. You, Jane. Some rare ones I have come across are Mulky, Jharkharia, Beri, and not so rare ones are Sinha, Mahapatra, Rastogi, S(h)rivastava, Verma, Yadav, Chauhan/Chavan, Deshpande, Chaudhary/Chowdhury, Menon, Gupta,.. my own surname is pretty rare, research has shown.




The Sharmas and Srivastavas (and Sinhas) in my Life

There are a lot of Sharmas, Srivastavas and Sinhas in my life- and have been. I have no idea why, but my closest pal in engineering college was Alok Srivastava, in Hyderabad. He and I hung around together, wrote the CAT and GRE together (actually he was the type who wore jeans in 1977, when we desi types did not know how to spell Levi’s), and went on to get a Ph.D. from the same place in the US-Clemson. It was all his fault. Anyway, he was a gem of a guy, and I feel sorry that he didn’t live longer-sorry for myself.

Then, there have been a disproportionately large number of colleagues, students and acquaintances with these surnames. Some I remember particularly vividly (hey, I haven’t lost it yet). I currently have an assistant whose surname happens to be Sharma. She has been a great help with the mundane aspects of teaching, such as grading, and technology interface. At IMT Nagpur, where I spent considerable amounts of time post (my turning) 50, I have had lots of students and a colleague named (Jitendra) Sharma. And a talented writer, Tanya Shrivastava, and a talented facebooker, Rohit, of the same clan.

Also some Sinhas. One is a budding photographer called Anuja who works in Chennai now, and another-Meghna- who I came to know as a blogger-student first, and has since moved to a corporate job in Delhi. Farther back in time, my childhood buddy and classmate was Sanjay Sinha (also called Tingu) in classes 5 and 6.

The only other categories of names that I have encountered more often in my life are the Srinivases. There were five in my engineering class of 60, so they were recognised by their roll numbers. So, I guess I owe a lot to all these people. The number of Guptas and Agarwals is mind-boggling, so I shall deal with them when I am less boggled. Also, a small number of Iyers- all that for another day.

Places I Have Visited - A to Z

 I will mix up countries and Cities/Towns. A- Amsterdam B- Belgium C- Cambodia D- Detroit E- El Paso, texas F-France G- Germany H- Holland I...

These Were Liked a Lot