RIFLE RANGE BOY: name

Friday, 8 September 2023

A lotus by any other name...

There I was, minding myself performing my daytime duties, when someone approached me.

"Excuse me, where can I meet Mr Rajeev?"

I scratched my head thinking, "Rajeev, Rajeev…?"

"Sorry buddy, can't help you there. Don't know any Rajeev."

Then it hit me. Of course, Majid. Before Majid was Majid, in another life, he was known as Rajeev.

"Oh yes. I remember now. Ranjeev is on the 1st floor. He is now Majid." I told him.

Then I left the place thinking…

A name is for the convenience of others to pick us out of the 8 million people on Earth. If Majid is comfortable with his new name, so be it. We should respect it. It, in no way, changes who Rajeev or, for that matter, Majid is. In the imagery of Avicenna's flying man, he is who he is.

A new name does not exclude the follies of the previous past, just as Pakistan came to discover. Wanting to carve itself out of the perceived vagaries of its motherland, it realised it could not disentangle itself from the shared history with ex, no matter how much it detects.

During the Great Game era, Imperialists sliced much of Africa for personal consumption. Imagine, Cecil Rhodes even named a vast piece of land after himself, which years later became a country. Of course, descendants of the initial inhabitants of Rhodesia renamed their country Zimbabwe, after the stone enclosure they used to live, after Independence. After years of being inadvertently referenced to the poultry industry and the colloquial term of a moron, Turkey applied to have its name, or its spelling, altered. Türkiye, as it was written in its Latin script, has become the official name. As we know, Türkiye, in its zest to modernise after the fall of the sick man of Europe, the Ottoman Empire, chose a Latin script over Arabic. That explains the umlaut over its 'u'.

Konark Sun Temple

Nobody chose to raise the alarm when Czhechia (Czech Republic,1993), Myanmar (Burma, nee Brahmadesh, 1989), Eswatini (Swaziland, 2018) and even Netherlands (Holland, 2020) changed their names.

The World suddenly looked up when a dinner invitation card to G20 delegates read letterheaded from the President of Bharat, not India as commonly known. To the rest of the World, the name Bharat reminds them of the nationalistic RSS's desire to reinstate India to its ancient name, as mentioned in the old scriptures. To the nationalists, this exercise of renaming old names is a branding exercise to spur its citizens' sense of patriotism. The leftists, who missed the nostalgic days of Fabian Society card-carrying Pandit Nehru, decry the majority's dominance over the minority and the oppressed. In their minds, this move reaffirms their belief that the ruling party is ultra-nationalist, Islamophobic and Hindutva in ideology in wanting to create a Hindu Rajthra.

A bit of context here. In Indonesian and Malay languages, the word for west is Barat. Since Bharat was a civilisational icon in those days and was situated west of the Malay archipelago, the term 'Barat' was assumed west. Article 1 of the Indian Constitution starts with 'India, that is Bharat, shall be a union of states.' It denotes that both names are interchangeable. A name is for others to use. What others decide to call us sticks with us. Back in the day, the people on the West of the Sindhu River, i.e. Persians, had a problem with the letter 'S'. It simply did not exist in their language. They would refer to the people on the other side as Hindus. This is further exemplified by how they address their God, Ahura Mazda. The people in Bharat also have Asura and Deva. Both their belief systems were not much different - fire temples in Zoroastrianism and Agni pooja in Hinduism. Asura became Ahura.

A rose, by any other name, smells as fragrant. A lotus, irrelevant to where it grows, appears as pristine. India, or Bharat, will stay as chaotic, colourful, and opinionated as ever, with much culture and wisdom to impart to the World. With its newfound zest, it is going places, including the Moon and the Sun. The name change is merely a branding exercise to remind the World that it catching up after missing the bus that brought the World's first two Industrial Revolutions involving steam and coal, respectively.

P/S. Thanks to Aman for instigating me to write up this piece.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Saturday, 25 February 2023

What's in a name?

Maverick School, Malaysia.

I am amused by how some establishments have probably wrong choices of names. In my mind, their names have negative connotations. Or it was intended to be so. As they say in business, any publicity is good publicity. Anything that would stir the readers' curiosity or turns any head is good for business.

Recently I came across two such instances.

A private school called' Maverick' was set up in the Klang Valley. I always thought a maverick always has something up his sleeves. He has a scheme, a sleight of hand, that would benefit him. I perceive a maverick as someone like Artemus Gordon of 'The Wild Wild West' (1965), a secret service spy with tricks up his sleeves to protect the US President.

Apparently, over the years, the term maverick had evolved from giving a negative connotation to something positive. People are no longer expected to be conforming and obedient but to think outside the box to be innovative. Correspondingly, students should not be rote learners but creative instead. Hence, to be a maverick is legitimately legal.

Traditional wisdom dictates that we are strong by numbers. We are familiar with Aesop's fable about the feuding brothers and their ailing father's attempt at unifying them through the analogy of breaking twigs singly versus a tied bunch.

Nexus, Bangsar South, Malaysia.

However, big institutions and conglomerates have earned themselves a bad reputation in modern times. With the ever-widening income gap between the top 1% and the rest of society, they are the favourite subjects of leftists and conspiracy theorists.

A new term often thrown in daily conversations nowadays is the word 'nexus'. That word was intended to denote one's central position in the thick of things, like centrioles in the process of nuclear divisions. Or in the centre of the railway line connections. Also, a nexus of evil is out to destroy civilisation as we know it, etc. Examples of the nexus often mentioned in civil or not-so-civil conversations include The Rothchild Foundation, the Illuminati, the Masons, China, the World Economic Forum and George Soros' Open Society.

Pran

To name a multi-million mammoth construction 'Nexus' to hold business dealings and functions and to promote it as the next best thing since sliced bread may appear shady at best. Does it not sound like a big establishment with nefarious intents? Again, any news is good news.

It cannot all be doom and gloom. If not, my father would not have named me after a Tamil movie star synonymous with villainy. If Charles Sobhraj were notorious, would he have called me Sobhraj? But then, there was a time around the world when no child was named Pran, as the name Pran was the epitome of evil as far as the Hindi film world was concerned. He personified what evil meant. His big piercing eyes, grinding teeth and a cloud of cigarette smoke around his silhouette were enough to send shivers down viewers' spines.

Forget the fact the name 'Pran' refers to the Pranava Mantra, which signifies the cosmic sound Om or Aum, the most powerful mantra in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism.