Punjabis in My Life

One of the earliest was Pritpal Singh Gandhi, my team-mate in the Hyderabad Public School cricket team. He was known for getting the runner run-out when he went out of the crease before the bowler left the ball- Pritpal got many wickets that way.

We had close friends, Shalina, Sharat and Shobhna, in Ramagundam while growing up. And later, of course, many students from Punjab. The Kaurs themselves would fill a paragraph. At Indore alone, there have been quite a few- Bhuvneet, Harshdeep, Barleen, Jasmine (though she is farzi, living in Mumbai).. and elsewhere, Achint at Kirloskar, Jasleen from IMT Nagpur, where we had Jasbir Singh, Kulbir Singh on our faculty too. Harvinder Singh, similarly, was there along with a few others at IMT Ghaziabad., not to forget the Aroras, Ahujas and Puris and Bhallas- and yes, Rashmi Agarwal, who told me she's from Punjab. Baljeet Singh, student at IIM Indore.

I also teamed up with Gurvinder Singh Shergill who works in New Zealand for writing a journal paper a few years ago. JD Singh was a loveable marketing prof. I had at Bangalore during my MBA.

Then there are semi-Punjabi ones such as Shweta Kushal, current colleague. No wonder I keep getting better at puns..got it?

Dynasty

Sounds quite funny when you split the word as dy-nasty. We will now examine what other fun can be derived from dynasties that we know of.

Ghori sounds gory? Darna mana hai.

Khilji dynasty must have laughed khil-khila ke (tough to translate from Hindi).

Tughlaqs were ... well, contributors to generating a concept- Tughlaqian (crazy) behaviour!

Richard the V was only one up on Richard the  IV.

One Singh dynasty cannot be distinguished from another. But we know that "Singh is King" so it's Ok. Maybe some of them can be attached to the place they ruled over, like Mewar or Jaipur. Complications arose when they had prefixes like Sawai (Man Singh) attached to them.

The Parmars had Raja Bhoj from whose times the famous question "Kahan Raja Bhoj aur kahan Gangu Teli" became popular (loosely, it means, what's the comparison between a king and a commoner?). Apparently Raja Bhoj was ruling over these parts of M.P. that I am now living in.

Do we owe the Lodi gardens of Delhi to one of the Lodis? probably.

The Tuluva dynasty to which Krishnadevaraya of Hampi/Vijayanagar belonged had a court jester called Tenaliraman who gave endless joy to us kids with his witty stories.

Not to forget the Holkars whose name adorns an airport here.