Mubaarak : Ho, Na Ho.....

An Egyptian family has named their first baby daughter Facebook in honor of the part played by it in the recent Revolution.

While folks out here are cracking jokes about what will happen if she marries Google Patel, possibly have children called Twitter and Orkut, have a pet Dog called Tumblr, and show a Flickring interest in Picasabhai, one wonders , what a name bonanza awaits us if we decide to name kids based on significant things happening in our country and those that make it happen.


This takes me back to how names have come about.

Two generations ago, at least in the area where I come from, Gods and Goddesses were the most popular.

I think my grandmother was the last generation to follow the custom of being named after goddesses. She and her sisters were named after the popular goddesses of learning, valour and the like. For every one's naming convenience , a single goddess in Hindu mythology may boast of several names, all having to do with her inherent great qualities, her ability to be a certain God's wife and so on. My grandma probably named her children (my father and uncle) after Gods, to be on the safe side; but after that, the names were all on the slightly abstract side for boys (undefeatbale, victorious), except mine, where I was supposed to be named after a highly fragrant flower that grows in our native place (which I have not spotted till now). Sigh.


The diversity of this country, the dialects and pronunciations can have the same name appear different depending on the place you come from. Some regions have a complete aversion to saying "sh", converting them to "s" and some areas pronounce every name with a distinct O-fication, as well as converting, with a vengeance , all ordinary "s's" into "sh's".

Today, the style seems to have zeroed in on having short names, for both girls and boys, at least in my state. These names often have some connection with Gods and Goddesses, given that some of the Gods have like 1008 names. But unlike our Egyptian friend, we have been singularly uninterested in naming kids after current country heroes.

Yes, folks earlier named their children Jawaharlal (after Nehru) , Indira (Gandhi) and so on.

But today there is a singular lack of heroes (in public life), after which people can name their children. The only exception one can think of is Sachin Tendulkar who is again, considered "Godlike " in Cricket, and so people happily name their children after him.

Today the situation in the country is such, that despite having great meanings and stuff, there probably exists a blacklist of names; names no one wants their children to have.

Like .

Raja, of the Telecom scam, a name that earlier bespoke grandeur and nobility, and generosity. In Arabic it means anticipation, and in Sanskrit , it means radiant (as in King). He certainly "anticipated" stuff well and cleverly too, and cannot be anything else but "radiant" with all the 2G/3G wireless Spectrum stuff. Of course it helped to have a political boss called Karunanidhi , which is supposed to mean "someone whose heart is full of kindness" . Must be kindness laced with a frill of deals with powerful ladies.

But today it means a crook and a cheat.

Nira Radia , again of the 2G/3G spectrum scam. For one thing, the origins of the name Nira are Hebrew, and Nira means plow or a loom. No wonder, she was able to weave the various industrialists and ministers together, as she endeavoured to plow back into her PR business, the tangible benefits of knowing the right phone numbers in Mumbai and Delhi. Maybe she should have spelt her name Neera. That's a name , which in India means ,"by oneself, or complete " , but also has origins in Greek and Spanish , where it means " young, devastating, and capable of great destruction"......

Anyway, Raja and Radia as a pair were destined to be.....

Suresh (as in Kalmadi) , of the Commonwealth Games Scam , is supposed to mean Lord of the Gods. Also another name for Lord Vishnu. Kalmadi certainly knew how to Lord it over people, but I think if Heaven has courts, Lord Vishnu would rush to file an affidavit to delete Suresh as a name from the list.

Of course , can Ashok , (Ashok Chavan, ex-CM of Maharashtra ) and lately of the Adarsh building scam lag behind ? In Sanskrit his name means "not causing sorrow". Maybe all those folks putting money in the building believed that. Maybe he himself believed that, and so did his ma-in-law, and assorted defence warrior types. But sometimes one tends to fool oneself......

And how can you forget Lalu Prasad Yadav, of the Fodder Scam. Making money off food meant for our four legged friends. A wide search on Google confirms the fact that this name has an unknown origin, but some enterprising types, used numerology to find out that the sum of alphabetical order of letters in LALU is 46 and this makes LALU arithmetic buddies with words like Amicable, Adept, Best, Fast, Magical, Frail. Don't know what happens if you spell him LALOO. But I dont see a rush anywhere to name the children after him.

We certainly cannot leave aside UP Chief Minister Mayawati . Supposed to mean "full of illusions" , she definitely creates many for the people she purports to represent. Any illusions of power that she creates certainly do not reach in her rural areas where her legislators continue to molest helpless women; and people have no illusions of what the police are likely to do, if you went there to complain. The Maya is on full display when she fights for the highest taxpayer title, and flaunts her real estate holdings and diamond jewellery, not to mention boot polishing security....

While the severe lack of public figures to uphold as examples and name children after, is something that is obvious and possibly worrisome, , it has always been safe to name kids after the 5 elements; you cannot go wrong naming children after Fire, Water, Earth, Air and so on.

Maybe it is time to abandon all these naming conventions and give modern names and initials to folks. Like GPRS Mahadevan, or S. S. Bluetoothay, or Sam Sung Tooji, Black Beri Threeji, GSM Sharma, or Kapil Croray. You could even have ROFL Amarsingh, or UMMV Gandhi.



But to getting back to Baby Facebook , one certainly wonders ....

When folks will come to attend the naming ceremony party in Egypt, for Baby Facebook, what do you think they will say to her delighted folks ?

Mubaarak ho ?

Art Associations of the pleasing kind.....

If you really think back to how Art got a Start, it will be very clear that what was mandatory there, was an artist, a medium, some tools, and an inspiration.

Go back to the Stone Age days, Shri Dagdu Flintstone probably saw so much of nature, and various beasts, on his daily forays to provide for his family, that he was terribly impressed and inspired , and immediately got down to carving his observations on the walls of his resident cave. These Cave paintings today tell us a lot about the lifestyle then.

By and by, the world progressed , and went through something like the Ice Age, which was a real test. This was the time , 25,000 years ago, that artists living along the Danube in Austria were inspired to create "Venus of Willendorf", the oldest known statue , 4.5 inches high, depicting a woman of exaggerated physical proportions. It is assumed by scholars, that this was a response to harsh and bleak ice-age conditions that existed then, and the artists created something that indicated their appreciation of fatness and fertility, something whose idea impressed the hell out of them in those dreary days.

By the time weather and other things improved, folks became smarter, and the Egyptians , by 5000 B. C., were into a stable agricultural existence. No one was desperate, and art with disproportional anatomy slowly coalesced into human figures with regular size anatomy, depicting actual day-to-day sizes. The artisans typically worked in groups, whimsical drawings were not encouraged, and you were supposed to be proud of regular , exact, accurate reproductions.

The Greeks, of course learned things like sculpting and quarrying techniques from the Egyptians, and although they had guys excelling in maths and astronomy and sciences, the artistic ones, were obsessed , with what was the "ideal" human body, necessarily an athletic one. They perfected the technique of making statues showing abnormally perfect human figures.

Why did each of these civilizations, emphasize different aspects ?

Its all about a neurological concept call "peak shift "; something that says, that our brain is hard-wired to focus upon parts of objects with pleasing associations. So if you were an artist, the tendency would be to reproduce human figures with parts that mattered the most to you.


Which has me worried .



I am speechless.

Read this .


Belgian artist Jan Bucquoy, the creator of "Musee du Slip" or underwear museum in Brussels, is someone whose work is rooted in the surrealist movement and inspired by fellow Belgian Rene Magritte, whose famed works include a painting of a pipe with the caption "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" (This is not a pipe).

(Big Deal. The last time I forgot salt in the veggies and said "there is no salt", NO ONE applauded; in fact some turned around and said, "Typical !".......Hmm)

He feels that artistically displaying underwears of famous people, framed conservatively in this way, indicates his utopian longing for an equal society. And so we have Sarkozy, Belgian King Leopold II, the Belgian finance minister Didier Reynders, Queen Fabiola of Belgium, Margaret Thatcher, and several famous artists , singers and politicians of Belgium, donating their innerwear for this museum.

What boggles the mind, is, what is the inspiration here ?
Is a bunch of boxer shorts framed and displayed , art ?
What does this say of a society that actually gives space to such a museum, and dignitaries who donate "unmentionables" for display ?

Or is it , that, now, since food , shelter and clothing have been achieved, as requirements for the citizenry, these have now changed from being basic needs to entertainment items ? Much like folks born in the lap of luxury,enjoy "slumming it", some summer for entertainment, , as they stay in a place infested with those that don't have enough to live on even otherwise , and then come back to describe the whole thing as "far out" and surreal .....


Whatever.

But I must add, one of my most abiding concerns this day, is the price of vegetables in the market. Its very, very important .

As a pucca vegetarian, I rejoice at seeing fresh veggies crowding the stalls, and then tears threaten to descend as I hear the prices. I have even stopped buying certain veggies. Some vegetables have just disappeared altogether from the market.

So, just in case someone in the year 2120, decides to study food patterns in the early part of the 21st century, in what was then part of North eastern Mumbai, I have created an art piece, which they can "accidentally discover .....

Like the statues with oversize, regular and idealistic bodies.

Like this artist guy from Belgium who is inspired by, for heaven's sake, underwear.

Like the neurological "peak shift" theory says, our human brain is hard-wired to focus upon parts of objects with pleasing associations.

I told you , I like cauliflower, radishes, tomatos, limes, bitter gourds, beets and fenugreek.......