What’s in a name?

DISCLAMAIR: Censor Board has been very cruel to me and has asked me to edit a few lines in this post in exchange for a ‘U’ certificate. So friends, I have to edit a few things, which will be seen enclosed in “*”. Sorry for the inconvenience.

Long ago there was a guy called William Shakespeare who gave the world this famous dialogue “What’s in a name?” Well my answer to this is ‘everything’. We cannot imagine life without names. I am here to discuss about the names but not the regular or official ones.

Since childhood we have been giving Nicknames to our teachers, principals and friends. Some of us even have nicknames given to us by our parents and the family members call us by that name only instead of our official names but those nicknames are the pretty decent ones. The names that we give our friends, teachers are far from any sort of decency and are super hilarious.

Here I would like to mention about a few such names that I came across in my school and college days. To start with the school days, our principal was lovingly called as dinku, vice-principal as raka, our biology sir was luka, physics sir was lallan, mathematics sir was munshi (in his spectacular spectacles he looks like a munshi jii). Hindi and history ma’am were always together and we call them indu-bindu, music sir was raju tabalchi. Can’t write about this particular Hindi sir because the censor board was cruel enough to make me edit his name, two more mathematics sir were called gucchu and khujli, hindi one was bhaya, nagin was our English ma’am, carpenter sir was nanu, another geography fellow was charsi.

I remember only a few of my school mates like gheesa, dibiya, chahu, kauya, sanju-manju, sharp shooter, kaliya, angu, sheela (a guy bearing the characteristics of a girl, thus the name), udho dho dho, jhansi ki raani, chakka, labour, murda,hilla, hateli, tin-tin, dollar bahu (another guy), master jain. Sadly I haven’t met most of them since I left school. Where are you guys??????? I miss you people.

Now let’s come to the most important, memorable, exciting, thrilling and adventurous part of my life - the college life. Although it’s not at all fair to compare the college life with the school life which was an equally exciting and memorable one; I could have never imagined the same level of freedom that I had in college days to be there in school days. Till the time I was in school, I had to listen to stuffs like - come back home on time, don’t ride bike above 40kmph (40!! I can ride a bicycle faster than this), sleep on time, eat on time, don’t watch movies, study on time and hell lot of other things but in college-approx. 2300 kms from home, there was no one to say all this. I could do whatever I feel like. Also during the school days, at the time of examinations I used to get very nervous but in college during the exams I could see everyone equally nervous and that helped me reducing my nervousness to a great extent. Ok so without comparing the school-college life let’s get back to the topic which is about the nicknames.

The first day we met each other in hostel, we introduced ourselves with our original names and within two months (I wonder what took it so long) we all had given some nicknames to each other. These nicknames were based on our character, attitude and habits. Here I would like to mention about a few such names.

To start with I would like to mention about my roomy jhadu- his hairs were like a broom-stick so he got that name. Then there was tinka- he was a very lean guy, ravi ra**I - daily after dinner you can spot him at pmc (piya milan chowk), ganiya - as his favourite dialogue was ga**ya phad denge, paddhu- due to his farting habits, mutthu- censor board had asked me to edit this one so I can’t tell the exact reason for his name, taap - now there are many stories behind this; some say he copies a lot in exams thus the name, some say he flicks stuffs, some say he is a stalker. I don’t know the exact reason. There was Prabhu dada - because of his physique, palenda - because of his trademark dialogue “arre palenda ho re”, chucha nepali - as he was from India -Nepal border, joda - he was from some place which has this name, chowde - again censor board is to be blamed for me not telling the reason, pagal - he used to behave like that, atthe - again because of his peculiar speaking style, bbc - bi**y ba****d, chotu - he was a short statured guy.

There were other people also with the names like khan, boxer, chacha, mak, rathodi, main- la**a, up-maharaj, down-maharaj, chillar, bhai, la**ekant, gajju, chota gajju, keshu, dalla, monu, golu and DD bahi- his room was the hottest (wink wink) room in the whole hostel; thanks to the seniors who left the room without taking out all those posters and pics (wink wink) and also a few classmates like dhannu, mangu, miss jkr, patte, hero anna, dosti, fool, lambu, simha, chuha. And yes who can forget pande ji in our hostel because of who we got this famous dialogue “arre padhai-likhai to sab pande ** *** ** **** hoti hai”

I have never seen such characters in my life. I have done my schooling from my native place where everyone was from the same town so I never got a chance to interact with people from other places and ethnicity. It was only when I came to college I realized that there are such diverse characters in this world. But I feel that if such characters wouldn't have been there with me for all these four years, my life wouldn’t have been so rocking. I feel that those who haven't stayed in hostel during their engineering days are not true/real engineers.

Oh yes how can I forget to mention about this character? This guy will never share the sweets bought by him from his home but will hog like anything at the sweets bought by his friends, always ready to grab the sweets and ice-creams of his friends in the hostel mess during lunch/dinner, have done some setting with the mess staff of his hostel for some extra food items, used to eat chocolates at least 4-5 times a day, other people in hostel used to get sutta (cigarettes) to stay awake at night during exams and this guy will get chocolates for the night out which he will never share with any of his friends, didn’t even spared his classmates and used to eat their lunch during the boring lectures. Maybe his friends have predicted this, that’s why in the 1st semester itself they gave him the name “laddu”.

Enclosed below is the pic of this guy. You can see him hogging in the hostel mess.

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