Representative image of a collection of newspapers.
Credit: iStock Photo
Me occasionally going about flaunting my literary pretensions has caused situations both piquant and pleasant at times.
This one was when I had been writing sort of light-hearted capers for a leading English newspaper. The assistant editor, whose fate it was to slog through my pieces of literary marvel, once invited us writers to a get-together with him at his office over coffee. There were some twenty-plus of us in the group then – all of us strangers, except for our names. Coming face to face with me as I mentioned my name, the dapper, young journo appeared a bit taken aback. “Oh! You’re quite elderly!” he exclaimed. Retracting soon from his words, the young man smiled back: “Your writing is quite young! I like it.”
I knew he was being truthful in his compliments for my writing skills. For, most of my pieces were being approved by him, verbatim.
One more, this one about a different kettle. Finding myself unexpectedly rich in money one day, with half a dozen wads of currency notes on hand, I went up to my bank to deposit the windfall cash into my account. Writing out the slip of the bank’s deposit challan, I stood in queue at the cash counter. Handing over the burden into the outstretched hands of the girl across the counter, I waited. Now, tapping on the computer keyboard, the girl called out, “May I know your name, sir?” Strange, my name was just what I had written on the slip of that paper.
“Sir, I saw this name in the morning newspaper today, while reading that article Coffee Lore. Is it you, sir?” “Yes. I’m the same one,” I replied. “Wow! Please wait a little. I just want to have a look at you.” Standing on tiptoe, the girl stared at me wide-eyed and sat down with a “Thank you.” Not finding anything more exciting, perhaps. For the old fogey, it was being on cloud nine, basking in the limelight of publicity. And writing a skit about it later!
One more, and this one is a bit bizarre. It was the one headlined Dancing With Dudes. It was about a frolicsome act of dancing around while meeting and greeting K Shivarama Karanth, a renowned, multifaceted Kannada literary personality.
I came to know about it appearing in print when one of my cousins called to enquire whether it was indeed me who had authored the piece. And it was! That is because I have been in constant dispute with my name as it stands. My name is quite a misnomer of sorts, meaning many things to many in my family circle. Maybe the subject can be considered good stuff for a doctoral dissertation on framing names and surnames!