The other day, one of wifey’s female friends had come visiting and the two women were giggling away to glory, cracking girlie jokes that the male of species is singularly incapable of understanding.

Wifey’s friend had a son too; a real cute little bloke who was trying all his stunts to impress my 5 year old daughter. I asked his mom what the little bloke was called. She said, “Arsh”.

“Oh, Harsh. Nice name.”

“No, no. Not Harsh. His name is Arsh. A-R-S-H”, she clarified and went on to explain the meaning of Arsh. She said that it means the Sky, the Seventh Heaven or something like that. Good word.

As a response, I had this stupid thing to say: “There is another meaning to that word. You see those Chandsi Dawakhanas and aphrodisiac clinics which operate from tents. They sell exotic medicines and claim to cure sexual diseases or Gupt Rog. You know stuff like piles and premature ejaculation. They write this word on their posters too... this word arsh means bawasir in that context. Bawasir is what they call an anal fissure, piles or something like that.”

The gentle lady was suitably disgusted at my cheap attempt at showing off my superlative vocabulary.

Wifey killed me for that comment. No wonder she, my ‘First Class MA in English’ wifey, asks me to keep my stupid ‘Second Class Science Bachelor’ opinions to myself.

Height of impoliteness and sick conversational skills apart, I have been wondering what is it about these unusual sounding names that is gaining mass following.

I have been observing this hot new trend of naming kids with the most exotic (or should I say ‘ethnic’) words one could find in the dictionary. This is a super cool trend and is especially popular with urban middle class Indians who find that their kid’s ‘ethnic’ name is the only connection with their glorious past. Incidentally, these are the same parents who slap their kids for speaking their mother tongues and make sure they only speak Angrezi all the time.

The result is quite amusing. The old Maheshs, Sureshs, Reenas, Gitas have been replaced with Ekalavyas, Dattatreyas, Prathams and Neelambaras. Simple funda. The more complicated the name is, the more ‘cultured’ you become.

Nothing wrong about that, really. It certainly adds some variety to our jaded lives and also provides good tongue twisters to help keep our tongues flexible.

Add to that this super trend of changing spellings of names, fiercely promoted by the celebrity numerology-inspired-name-changer Jumani couple. Bollywood and TV personalities have acquired super success just because they appended an extra vowel or consonant to their names.

Now I know why Tushar Kapoor (sorry, Tussar Kapoor) is so supremely successful. Super hot babe Kareena Kapoor became hotter after she became Karriena or something.

Of course, it is an urban legend how much benefit one gets by adding an extra ‘K’ to a TV soap name. It guarantees super TRP ratings and over 5000 episodes of dead people coming alive.

I think it’s high time I start calling myself BhiTi or VeeTee instead of the boring VT. Or better still; please call me kVkT (K silent). That probably will provide some cosmic connection to my name. May be it provides a short cut to the rock star status I have been longing for. Who knows.