'hey, did you hear? raj kumar died. people are rioting.'
'who raj kumar?'
'no, silly, not anybody we know in real life. the actor.'
'my favorite actor raj kumar? oh. i thought he was already dead.'
'i just saw his obituary in the paper today. he's the one with the mustache, right?'
'well, yeah, but that could also be rajkumar. he made films in the kannada language. totally different.'
'good lord. what are the odds you'd have two old indian guys who used to be megastar actors who look sort of similar with their mustaches and whose names sound exactly the same with the only difference being a space?'
'not everyone is creative when naming their children.'
My mum keeps telling me he's the one who was in the movie Pakeezah.
ReplyDeleteAnd in 2000 when I told her he was kidnapped, she said, but he's dead.
Which one is he?
Pakeezah one died in 1996 from a throat thing. the one who was kidnapped a couple years ago by a superbandit was the other one, who died recently. i know, it's so confusing.
ReplyDeleteGlad I passed on Kumar as a "last" name. Already confusing enough. :-)
ReplyDeleteAccording to Life Of Pi, Kumar is a fairly common Indian name. Although it doesn't address the use of spaces.
I loved Life of Pi! The island bit freaked me out a little. I'm testiment to uncreative parents. I share my name with 4 other girls in my class of 20.
ReplyDeleteI have some overly inventive friends who named their baby girl, "Nefret."
ReplyDeleteA "superbandit"? You have no idea how awesome I think the notion of being a "superbandit" is.
ReplyDelete---X
the name has become like how people throw around Romeo, from Shakespeare: 'hey, raj kumar, stop ogling that girl and do your homework.'
ReplyDeletei enjoyed life of Pi, too. it really made that line between perception of reality/imagination pretty blurry. those last few pages made me reconsider what i had been thinking the entire time.
wow, nefret. where does that name originate?
superbandit he was:
Rajkumar hit the headlines when infamous bandit Koose Muniswamy Veerappan stormed into the film star's farmhouse and abducted him in July 2000.
He kept him in the forest for 109 days before freeing him in exchange for a reportedly substantial ransom.
The kidnapping by Veerappan, who was wanted by police in more than 100 murders, gripped the nation and brought rioting fans out on to the street in protest at his abduction.
During the early days of his abduction, Bangalore was shut down by angry protests by Rajkumar's fans.
Then prime minister Atal Behari Vajpayee said he was thankful Rajkumar emerged alive from the forest or Karnataka, the star's home state, "would have burnt".
Veerappan was later shot dead by police in October 2004.
(AFP)
I've always appreciated creative naming, especially since my name is the least creative name on earth. My kids won't go through life with a boring name, that's for sure...
ReplyDeleteNefret is Egyptian for beautiful.
ReplyDeletei thought all the actors over there have the same last name which is: khan?
ReplyDeletei guess its khan or kumar
nefret, like nefertiti, the queen? that's cool.
ReplyDeleteyeah, khan. dude, these guys should not be allowed to rename themselves.