What’s in a name??

So how important are our names?

Well, we all have different names, the first ones, last ones, middle ones, nick names, alter ego name and many other stupid names which we are christened with, either by our friends, colleagues or  by our enemies.

 Today I want to share my story of having a name which is both, common and also unique!!

My name is Raj Visa.

So let me talk about my first name, i.e “Raj”. Raj in hindi means “rule” or “reign”. This name even finds a space in Oxford dictionary which defines it as the time span of the British rule in India. This was the literature supposed to be known about my name…..

 But if you watch Bollywood movies, you would be sure by now that it is the most common name in India. Thanks to numerous Shahrukh Khan movies and all the other romantic flicks, the name “Raj” has become synonym with a guy who is romantic ( I mean desperately romantic or in deep love). This name has been made so popular in Hindi movies that I have actually seen some guys, who are a wannabe real life Casanova, renaming them as “raj”. It is somehow supposed to make them look “kewl” in front of girls (WTF), but I think it makes them look as desperate as hell!! Also here is my next argument….

According to me,”Raj” is the most uncommon common name. What I mean is that this name is only popular because of movies, but you would rarely come across  a guy whose name is “Raj”. You would find many people having “raj” as prefix or suffix in their first name… names such as “rajkumar” or “yashraj”. But guys with only first name as Raj are a bit rare to be found. Even in the famous sitcom “The big bang theory”, the full name of actor Kunal Nayyar is “Rajesh koothrapalli” which is shortened to “Raj”. But still I have to deal with stupid remarks made by many people, especially the ones quoting Shahrukh Khan from the movie “Rab ne bana di jodi”. Yup! You all got it, the stupid dialogue…”Raj … naam toh suna hi hoga”.!!! And I have to deal with those buffoons (sigh!!!).

Coming to the unique part of my name, that is my surname. It is “Visa”

I have been in centre of many jokes just because of my surname. I agree it’s quite unique but that doesn’t mean people should actually ask me if it is my real surname (true story). My job interview had actually started after discussing my surname for five minutes. One of my high school teacher used to call me passport (HAHA, you were supposed to laugh on that). All this have an advantage also. I don’t have to alter my name while looking for gmail account. It is also easier to find me in Facebook, Instagram and other social networking sites. But my worries don’t end here. I live in the eastern part of India. Here you would come across people from two states whose language doesn’t have ‘V’ alphabet in it. I am talking about the Bengali and Odia people. The alphabet ‘V’ is replaced with ‘B’ in both these language. The plight that I am talking about is hilariously shown in the movie “Kahaani”, in which the lead was named “Vidya” and she goes to the city of Kolkata. Funny as it may sound, her name was always misspelled as ‘Bidya’ by the sweet people of Kolkata. But that was a movie!! I had to face lots of trouble in my past when my name was wrongly misspelled as “bhisa” or “bisa”. Also no one pronounces it correctly. So there you go… I have trouble with my surname also.

I know that I am not the only guy who has faced problem with his name. It is also not that I hate my name. I proudly say that my name has been given by my father!! It is just the fact that I have to face a bit of problem but it all ends in a funny way.

So all of you out there with a unique name or a common name….. If you are ever troubled by it, then just remember Shakespeare who wrote these lines in the famous “Romeo and Juliet”….

“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet”, in which means that a name is an artificial and meaningless convention!!!  

Three cheers to those who are named “Raj”

And also to those who have the surname “Visa”!!!  

Delhi election 2015: Analysis of the resounding victory of the Aam Aadmi Party by a common man himself!!

image source

The mandate is out. The sweeping of the seats has been done. Aam Aadmi Party(AAP) or Common man’s party has swept the Delhi assembly election. One of the youngest party to fight election in the world’s largest democracy, AAP achieved a feet which all the exit polls failed to even calculate. AAP success story is nothing less than a fairy tale in the Indian politics history.

A  techie turned civil servant turned social activist turned politician, the new chief minister of Delhi, Arvind Kejriwal ,(IITian,IRS officer ,RTI(right to information) activist, Ramon Magsaysay awarder) has a new feather to add to his elaborated cap. And the cap which ironically, boldly scream “mein hoon aam aadmi” or “I am the common man”.

Winning 67 out of 70 seats of the Delhi assembly is not a joke. To curb the winning streak of the ruling BJP and to stop the chariot of the prime minister of India is definitely a huge feat. But what magic does Kejriwal’s broom (his party’s symbol) did which other party failed to do so?

Well, most people are still impressed with the work he did briefly for the time when he formed a minority government back in December 2013. Though it lasted 49 days only, its work still resonated with the people. The grass root plan was laid out properly. A promising agenda and manifesto was explained to people. And these simple things seems to have worked way better than the high profile campaigning and political mud throwing.

I really want to applaud for the maturity shown by the Delhi’s voters. Let us go back to May 2014 and look at the result of Indian general election. Delhi consists of 7 parliament seats. Even though AAP did impressive work in those 49 days, they failed to secure a single seat in those election. All the seven seat were won by BJP. They knew that should vote for a party which can provide us good governance and can form stable government. During general election, BJP was the obvious candidate to form a stable government. And during the state election, they thought that AAP could provide better governance in the state and they provided them the majority.

But what about BJP??  They were flying high in every state election past the general election of 2014 when they returned to power after a decade. Interestingly BJP’s vote share still remains the same. It has seen only 1.5% dip in its vote share, but still it went down from 31 seats in last election to 3 seats in this election.  The wonder happened because Congress vote share reducing drastically. While BJP vote share was 33% in last election, this year it had 32% of vote share and the rest of the vote were swallowed by AAP, which throttled them from 29% vote share in 2013 to a whopping 55% in 2015, i.e 29 seats to 67 seats .Somehow or the other , many section are yet to digest the BJP’s agenda and it is their work now to also include those people who are generally shying away from their party.

I really wanted BJP to come to power in Delhi. Not because I am a loyal BJP supporter( which btw I am)But because of the fact that Delhi is a special state where some power is vested by the central government and the other are vested by the state government. So it would have been better if both the state and central government parties would have been the same. How can we forget the famous Dharna(protest) by the then Chief minister Arvind Kejriwal because of his dissatisfaction  with the Delhi Police. This led to a stand-off between the center and the state government. Hope such situations don’t arise this time.

I heartily congratulate AAP and really wish Mr. Kejriwal stands to his promises . And for BJP… they should stop relying on the campaigning done by star politician ( Read : Mr. Modi) and should start preparing from the grass root level to explain people about its development agenda. Also , indulge every class, creed, caste  of people to your party, and stop relying upon the traditional vote of the urban middle class.

Few words for the oldest Indian political party , the Indian National Congress, which failed  to bag even a single seat in this election !!  please rethink about your leadership.

When I first started this blog, many of my friends advised me not to write about politics. But I just did. Because after all we live in a democracy and everyone has right to do anything under correct decorum. Thus I want to say that all the above views are my personal thought and not intended to offend anyone.

Statistics sourced from The Times of India.

Finally three cheers for the Democracy.

Hostels and it’s fun!

Few days ago I was chatting with my friend about my first hostel experience…. of how weird it was , of how the food sucked  and of how it gave us the ultimate fun as we all live away from the family, experiencing freedom as well as responsibility for the first time. For most of the students, their first experience of staying away from the family begins when they join college in different part of their country. I have been living in hostel from my higher secondary and from then my amazing life has began.

Living in hostel is fun, but I have seen many guys getting homesick and returning back to home. I remember my first day at the hostel. I have seen mothers crying when their children pack their bags. But it wasn’t the case with me. My parents didn’t create a scene (thankfully). Neither did I cried or felt homesick. Of course I miss home and the home cooked food or as we say Maa ke haath ka khana  but staying alone has obviously made me more self reliable and independent.

When I went to college, I choose not to stay in the college hostel. I decide to give it a try to private hostels. Unfortunately that wasn’t a pleasant experience. My hostel or as we say mess was owned by group of men who remained drunk whenever I saw them. Still as I was staying with my friends and the fact that there was no entry time limit ( well it was because the landlords were awake whole night drinking), so it was fun initially… but the reality set in soon. My first year classes were held early in the morning. So early that I had to leave my mess by 6.30 am in the morning to catch my college bus. The building entrance was a sort of indoor garage and the main gate was a huge steel gate. It was quite tall and you couldn’t even jump off the gate. The key of the main gate remained with the landlords. So every morning I have to go and wake up a bunch of stinky, drunk sleeping men, who used to hurl abuses at me as I was waking them up from their precious slumber. This continued from some days till one day I saw another guy of my mess jumping off the gate. As I said earlier the gate was too high…so that day I learned the technique to climb that gate by noticing the guy’s technique ( like at which corner we have to place our foot to climb etc). And there I was, jumping a 12 to 15 feet gate every morning…. I still think how I was able to do that…. So all set, no more dealing with those drunken idiots? Umm no!!

 Apparently they used to call all the messmates and gather them at  the terrace during night and under the influence of alcohol  made fake allegations such as ” I heard someone calling me a  motherf@#$er” or “I saw someone puncturing my bike”. I have to tell that those guys were quite huge and scary  too. I remember one of them was more than 6 foot tall and had shaved head and eyebrows too (much like Sanjay Dutt’s kancha cheena in the Movie “Agneepath”,,, really creepy). So I and my friends decided we have had enough. We decided to leave the mess. But as per the rule we have to pay two month’s rent in advance if we have to leave. Of course it was a verbal agreement and nothing was made legal in paper before we joined. And we knew that if we go and talk about leaving room to those goons, they would have created a problem. So when it was Durga Pooja vacation (eastern Indian school and colleges remains close for two week during this festival), we packed our stuff and said that we are leaving for home, but instead switched to a better place. After the vacations we informed them by the phone that we have left the place. They shouted on us but then asked us to come and give us the room key at least, to which we replied that you are free to break the lock!!! Thus the nightmare finally ended!! Phew!!

I know what we did wasn’t right, but hey sometimes you have to take the crooked way. So this is what I wanted to say about the hostel life. I would have never imagined myself getting out of the trouble like that, but I did. So in difficult times , these are the precious reminders which help us to overcome any difficulty.

 By the end of this year, I would be joining my first job. I know even there I have to find a bachelor’s pad but one thing which I can tell for sure is that it would not  be as fun as the college time…

P.S ,  I am bunking my class and writing this piece now!!!