My name is ...

There is this blogger who added me to some group on facebook the other day.  I was glad about this and thanked her. ' You are very welcome, Raghu'  she said.

I was not comfortable with this. No, it was not about what she said but there was something that sounded different and I was not too happy about this. I gave it a thought and I realized what it was. 

I often used to comment on her blog posts where my screen name is Kidoredo.  So she usually replied calling me Kido which I was used to.  Now I was uncomfortable when someone called me by my own name - Raghu.

Well, now that I have brought this topic about my name , let me go on with the whole story.

As a kid, I never liked the name ' Raghu' ( neither do I like it now.. but more on that later). It was so old fashioned even at the time when I was a kid.  My full name when I was admitted to school was K. Raghu Chaitanya and I always liked the name 'Chaitanya' more than the name 'Raghu'.

Being a devotee of a saint Raghvendra, my mom gave me the name 'Raghu'. Thanks to my Dad I was Raghu Chaitanya and not Raghavendra or Raghupathi. Ah.. how boring would those names be ! Why couldn't she christen me as Venu, Vamsi or any of those cooler names of Lord Krishna? Well, she was never a fan of Gods who practiced polygamy.

As a kid, I adored megastar Chiranjeevi/Chiru and his movies. In most of his movies, he was called Raja or Raju. Ha...my parents got the first two letters right and why 'ghu' instead of a 'ja' or 'ju'.? Raja/Raju appeared so cool.  Even heroes like Venkatesh and Nagarjuna had better names in their movies.

Raghu sounded so old fashioned and cliched even at the time when I did not know what 'cliche' meant. Added to that, Telugu family heroes like Sobhan babu  and Murali Mohan often had the name 'Raghu' in the movies those days.  'How uncool is that?' , I often wondered. The fact that I never had a 'pet name' like a Munna or a Bunny at home never helped my cause.

When I was in class 8, I decided to do something about my name. I started using K.R. Chaitanya and even Chaitan on all the labels of my books. Chaitanya to me was cool and I sooo loved the very few friends, cousins who called me by that name. 

At that time, I also went to a tuition where I shed my image of an 'Yes mam/Yes Sir'  student and instead start pulling everyone's leg including the guy who taught me. When I was in Class 9, studies became more important and I moved to a more serious tuition where there was more study.

Somehow all the K.R Chaitanya hype and hoopla fell apart and it was back to K.Raghu Chaitanya on all the labels on my books.  Good things never last long. The next 3 -4 years were as boring as they could. 'The name 'Raghu' is so synonymous with all the seriousness and boredom of the world',  I wondered.

The year 2000 and I was in IIIT. There were 3 guys with the name 'Raghu 'and 3  with the name 'Chaitanya' in our batch. Here is my chance to get rid of this name 'Raghu' I thought.  I thought of many cool names starting with R. 

'Rocky, Ricky, Rags!' I thought Ricky was the best of them and so self-christened myself by that name.

Ricky sounded so cool. Ricky was so contemporary. Ricky Ponting was also coming of age during that time. Ricky Martin wasn't doing too bad either. 'It can't get any better', I thought. It felt so good when all of the IIIT junta was calling me Ricky. 'There you go Raghu',  I said it myself.

However once I was out of IIIT into the big bad world, doing a job, the name 'Ricky' disappeared into the oblivion. I made an effort to retain the name 'Ricky', but somehow couldn't.  

And then one day  one of my blushes ( my name for a crush) said '

' Ricky is so unlike you.  The name Raghu suits you more.'  

Damn. I thought.  Am I so boring and old fashioned :P ?

And her words still echo in  my ears. Sob! Sob!

Perhaps Shakespeare was right. What's in a name? A guy called 'Raghu' would remain the same even when called by some other name :D