Skip to main content

Misnamed Or Mistimed

I first arrived in the US in the middle of hurricane season. Coming from a tropical country I was no stranger to rain and storm but the fact that they were given male and female names fascinated me.

The storms that year were nowhere near as devastating as Katrina or Rita. No one who shared names with them could have felt conscious of their names like I guess the Katrinas and Ritas among us might today.

I would hate to have my name bring back terrible memories each time it was spoken - it can't be a good feeling. I wonder why storms can't be named after mythological characters. Since they are acts of God that would hardly be inappropriate.

When a name or a date comes to acquire larger than life proportions it's personal significance to ordinary people gets compromised.

A 9/11 birthday or anniversary will not feel like one for years maybe - as long as it takes for public memory to turn numb to the odiousness of the date.In saying "Hello Katrina, wonderful meeting you" to a perfectly nice woman - there maybe be a sense of oxymoron.

It does not seem fair that big events should take away people of what is intrinsically personal.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Seinfeld: Whenever I go on tour, people always ask me to say "Hello Newman" ... with the hostility I would on the show.

JS: I wonder if there is a Newman in the audience. He maybe puzzled 'Why is he mad at me?'

:-)
Sideways Chica said…
So true. It's not as bad when the name is more common, like Andrew...but the Katrinas and the Wilmas of the world -- dare I say it -- get a bad name...literally!

I posted a new article Friday...you might get a laugh or two out of it...and the ensuing comments.

Ciao for now...

Teri
www.herestohappywomen.blogspot.com
Heartcrossings said…
Bleu - I'd hate to the Newman in the audience for sure :)

Popular posts from this blog

Part Liberated Woman

An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t...

Under Advisement

Recently a desi dude who is more acquaintance less friend called to check in on me. Those who have read this blog before might know that such calls tend to make me anxious. Depending on how far back we go, there are sets of FAQs that I brace myself to answer. The trick is to be sufficiently evasive without being downright offensive - a fine balancing act given the provocative nature of questions involved. I look at these calls as opportunities for building patience and tolerance both of which I seriously lack. Basically, they are very desirous of finding out how I am doing in my personal and professional life to be sure that they have me correctly categorized and filed for future reference. The major buckets appear to be loser, struggling, average, arrived, superstar and uncategorizable. My goal needless to say, is to be in the last bucket - the unknown, unquantifiable and therefore uninteresting entity. Their aim is to pull me into something more tangible. So anyways, the dude in ques...

Changing Pace

This blog has been a big part of my life for the last five years. Besides giving me the opportunity to connect with a number of interesting people and share my thoughts and ideas with them, it has been a form of daily meditation for me. No matter what the day threw my way, I made a very deliberate effort to find a little quiet time to write.The process of thinking about what to write and then the act of writing itself worked as an antidote to aggravations big and small. Five and half years ago, when I started Heartcrossings both my personal and professional lives left a lot to be desired for. The only real happiness I had was in being J's mother. While that was often enough to make me forget what I did not have, I sorely needed a third place to call my own and shape in the likeness of my dreams. This blog has been where there were no limits or constraints and that was absolutely exhilarating - it is the reason I have been able to nurture it for as long and as much as I have. A lot ...