Jun 4, 2009

Shakespeare nil, Chennai Corporation one

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Karunanidhi's birthdays certainly have something for everyone. If last year it was the prospect of cheaper idli-vadai-dosai, this year it's free gold rings, courtesy of the Chennai Corporation (at tax-payers' cost, as Amit Varma points out).

However, all that glitters ain't aurum, for, as the Mayor says:

"We have formed a committee comprising of Tamil teachers to verify if the baby's name is really in Tamil and only those names certified by the teachers to be in pure Tamil will be given the gold rings."
Unlike Scrabble, there's no mention of an official dictionary that everyone can uniformly refer to. Perhaps a website to check the Tamil-ness of one's name?

One new mother takes the safe way out:

"I've selected the name Kanimozhi, the Chief Minister's daughter's name because she's a very progressive and educated woman," said Bharathi Rani.
But mothers of bonny boys beware: assuming the committee will abide by letter & spirit of the announcement, then they may well rule out a bunch of familiar names. So steer clear of Karunanidhi, Dayanidhi, and Kalanidhi, the words in whose names are clearly of Sanskrit derivation.

7 comments:

KRWFan said...

Karunanidhi has anyway given his eldest son the pucca Tamil name "Stalin"

Shriniwas said...

Its Tamizh not Tamil! Baazh Thackeray would second it!

Stalin is a Tamil word for a person selling tea in stall I think...

The solution is clear, the committee chooses those, whose will pay largest segment of the gold ring as a kickback :)

BTW Any idea why Prabhakaran's son was named Charles Anthony ?

J Ramanand said...

S: First, send a recording showing if you can pronounce the 'zh' sound and then we'll talk ;-)

Re: Charles Anthony - I believe it was in homage to an LTTE associate.

KRWFan said...

(A post disappeared in the cyberspace. Don't know what happened. JR, if it appears later, please delete it)

Mu. Ka. Stalin was named after Comrade Jo. Stalin.

Comrade Jo suffered a stroke on the same day that Mu. Ka. was born and died four days later but it is not clear whether they two incidents are related.


Srini : Tea-stall was a nice one. Sorry about this serious post.

hirak said...

How about Ini Kamoze? Will that get a bad rap?

skeptic optimist said...

@JRam its - ळ ळ बाळाचा ळ !

ழ் I guess in the discussed language - This removes need for recording

Also does an former indian captain's name become A'zh'aruddin in Tamil :P

@KRWF Well Maybe this comrade Jo, had nothing much to do after he had gracefully murdered half his people in the labor camps of Siberia. Are Karunanidhi'g Grandchildren named Brezhnev, Andropov, Khruschev and perhaps Mao, Che, Castro. I would love the name MK Che Guevara, Chief minister of Tamil Nadu.

I pity the day MK Stalin becomes the foreign affairs minister and visits the West. He sure will get some nasty comments from the collective gang of Colbert, Stewart, Conan, Fox News etc. I swear he will wish his father had given him in a more Tamizh name. I would pay money to have his visa interview videotaped !

Google Online Jobs from Home said...

Nice to see your blog about Chennai Corporation.