My Name Is.....

Many Indian names are long… long enough to compete with the Great Wall of China.

There is even a joke around in the internet.
On a flight James bond was sitting next to an Indian guy.

Indian Guy: "Hello, May I know your name please?"
James Bond: "My name is Bond" Continuing in his inimitable style,
"......James Bond."

Then Bond asks: "And you?"
Indian Guy: " My name is Rao...
Siva Rao...
Samba Siva Rao...
Venkata Samba Siva Rao...
Yarlagadda Venkata Samba Siva Rao...
Rajasekhara Yarlagadda Venkata Samba Siva Rao...
Sitaramanjaneyula Rajasekhara Yarlagadda Venkata Samba Siva Rao...
Vijayawada Sitaramanjaneyula Rajasekhara Yarlagadda Venkata Samba Siva
Rao..."
James Bond faints…



Well, my dad has a long name (Kalyanavenkatramanan) and he always have trouble signing his name in cheques, documents etc. Keeping this in mind, he gave me a short name, Sriram. “All izz well” till I decided to get my passport. Generally, I write my surname abbreviated as K.K. (Stands for Kesarimangalam Kalyanavenkatramanan, Kesarimangalam is my native place) and this holds good for any purpose inside India. But, when I went to get my passport, they asked me to write my name completely.

I had my first problem when I went to New Delhi to get my Visa to Taiwan. The Taiwan Embassy officials printed my name wrongly (They printed “Kesarimangalam Kalyanavenkatraman Sriram” instead of “Kesarimangalam Kalyanavenkatramanan Sriram” – Can you make out the difference???). Be it my mistake or fate, I missed to find the mistake, I even came back home traveling 44 hours from New Delhi and had to return back all the way again and finally got it corrected. This cost me 88 additional hours of train travel, some money and brought in a lot of tension.

Every time I book my air ticket, the ticket booking agents in Taiwan get confused on how to put my name in the ticket. Once, an agent abbreviated my surname in such a way that the person issuing the boarding passes refused to issue one saying that my name looks different in my passport. After some phone calls to the agent and some waiting, I could get my boarding pass.

When I traveled back to India this time for a short vacation, I was asked to fill the immigration form. The funny thing is that, in our country with many people having long names, the column under “name” had only 30 boxes and I was asked to fill my name with one space between every part of the name. How can 40 letters be filled in 30 boxes? I had to write the remaining letters in a small space under the boxes. It would be better if they print a single bigger box instead of separating the space into 30 smaller squares. In that way, one can write his/her name in smaller fonts that can fit into the given space.



I wonder how Mr. Vijayawada Sitaramanjaneyula Rajasekhara Yarlagadda Venkata Samba SivaRao will fill his name in this immigration form...