We don't have control over certain choices in life. Like, we never got to choose our genes, our relatives, the color of our eyes, and our surname.
Yes, surname.
Well, I hate mine!
There! Out with it finally! Feel so much better now!
From the time I learnt what a surname was, and especially what MINE was, I have hated it!
Sharma. Yeh bhi koi surname hai!? Why couldn’t I be born an Oberoi, or a Malhotra or, my all time fantasy, a Kapoor?
I was in grade 4 when Chetan Sharma was a new member in our then (hopefully untainted) Indian Cricket Team. He was gaining popularity as a bowler and so I had my classmates asking me all the while if we were related.
To shine in reflected Sharma-glory was a temptation I couldn’t resist and I proudly and pompously said yes.
It may have been my imagination, but I got more respect at school after that.
All good things come to an end.
The fateful match happened where Javed Miandad hit my soon-to-be-disowned ‘uncle’s’last ball for a six and won back a match that went down in history.
I didn't go to school for a week after that.
As a teenager, I had a wild fantasy that I would wake up one morning to hear that the government had banned the usage of the surname 'Sharma', and ahem, yours truly has been appointed to choose a new surname. It remained a fantasy.
Notice how all movies/serials/adverts have these typical safari-clad 'Sharmaji's'. Also all the corrupt or weak or smarmy or slimy people will definitely be, you guessed it, Sharma's!
Thinking of holy matrimony, there's just one thing that scares the hell out of me.
Will 'he'…biting my nails here…. be…a cold shiver going up my spine ….a…. rolling my eyes till the whites show…Sharma? Followed by a shriek that was recorded 10.5 on the Richter scale!
When asked what kind of a guy I am looking for, I have just one thing on my list. NOT a Sharma.
Shakespeare once asked 'What's in a name?'
Thank God he never asked 'What's in a surname?' Or I would have had plenty to say!
Disclaimer: This article has been written in good humor, so all my fellow-Sharma’s , safari-clad or otherwise, please read it in the same spirit.:-))))