What's in a name, Bill?

7

If only Shakespeare lived in India, he would know the importance of a name. For years, the surname has played a critical role. It has defined caste and therefore acceptability as also political hierarchies but for some strange reason, first names were never seen to be very treacherous. My brother was christened Swapan, as Bengali a first name as any can be while my parents, decided to name me Suhel. Which for years was cause for a lot of torment especially on school certificates. My name was either spelt Sohel or Suhail and in the rare case it was ever spelt Suhel, the surname would inevitably have a Gujarati shade: Sheth or something like that. But then my formative years were spent in the civil surroundings of Calcutta: names did not matter unless of course you were a Tagore. Everyone went about their jobs ignoring the relevance of names.....

Raju Ban Gaya Conman

10

What could possibly drive a farmer's son to aim for the skies; to achieve all that he did and then fritter it all away: drive down in his Mercedes to surrender to a life of a common criminal? I guess greed could be the only motivator perhaps and why not? Look at the kind of India we've built in the last few years. There is now a rich list which gets published almost every day; there are more and more corporate awards and then we have the enduring saga of the stock markets. But the sad bit is that Raju was just not clever enough. There is a Raju in every nook and cranny of the corner office in India's corporate offices. Many years ago, ITC was benignly referred to as The Insider Trading Company. And like ITC, I am sure many companies have earned their fine sobriquets. The truth....

SHE…

10

I first met her two decades ago in Bombay: I was in college and she had been around for a long long time. She had seen many like me: upstarts, confident and wanting to partake of all that she offered. She had seen billionaires who behaved like children when they came to her; actresses who shed every emotion when they stood before her; industrialists who were robbed of their ego and their arrogance the moment they were in her presence. But whenever I saw her, there was a beatific smile: a smile, which reeked of indulging me. I was almost child-like in her presence. I would play with all the toys she had so painstakingly gathered; eat from the various kitchens she put together with so much grace and elegance; the manner in which she would invent something I never imagined was ever possible. I remember the lullabies she....