Mumbai to China Town......
October 1981, a son is born in the Shanbhag household in Mumbai. After lots of pondering and consulting, the parents and grandparents arrive at various names and finally decided on one which they feel suits the little boy best - 'Prasan'
The name means 'Happy', and they hoped that the boy would one day bring happiness into the family. Well.....I guess they are still waiting for that day to come.
Don't look at me like that!!!.......I am trying hard yaar !!! ......and I won't let them down....
But times change and 27 years hence, the boy finds himself in the South Indian city of Bengaluru, designing chips and in November of 2008, he is made part of team that handles a project for a Chinese customer. He works with two of his Chinese colleagues who have flown down from Shanghai.
He gets along well with them and after the end of the project, on the day of their departure their manager takes them out for 'team lunch' at Sindbad in the Pyramid Food court near by. After all the regular talk generally made up of questions like "Do you like India?"....."How did you like the spicy Indian food?"....the topic changed to their names.
Chinese people most often adopt an alternate name, since most Americans and Europeans cannot pronounce their names correctly. It is also common for Indians to adopt a similar technique, once abroad, to make it easy for their friends and collegues to call them there. So, Subashish becomes 'Sub', Shrikanth become 'Sunny' and Krishna becomes 'Kris'....
It was there that the I realized that 'Micheal' was actually 'Zhang' and 'Linda' was 'Peiye'. I wasn't able to catch Steve's Chinese name. Linda went to explain that Chinese writing is all about strokes and each alphabet, as such, is made up of multiple strokes and actually represents a whole word. So, 'Hello' is just one alphabet.
I couldn't resist my excitement and had to ask Linda to write my name in Chinese. There was an obvious gap in communication and hence, Linda smiled replied back saying "Yes, I will give you Chinese name."
"Even better" I thought....
So, that evening during the goodbyes and farewells, Linda told me that she will go back to Shanghai, think of something nice and mail me my Chinese name.
It's not often that people are named twice (and I am not referring to the names that our dear friend and colleagues call us daily)......but, today was my lucky day. As I opened my 'Thunderbird' session this morning, the following email cheered me up:
The name means 'Happy', and they hoped that the boy would one day bring happiness into the family. Well.....I guess they are still waiting for that day to come.
Don't look at me like that!!!.......I am trying hard yaar !!! ......and I won't let them down....
But times change and 27 years hence, the boy finds himself in the South Indian city of Bengaluru, designing chips and in November of 2008, he is made part of team that handles a project for a Chinese customer. He works with two of his Chinese colleagues who have flown down from Shanghai.
He gets along well with them and after the end of the project, on the day of their departure their manager takes them out for 'team lunch' at Sindbad in the Pyramid Food court near by. After all the regular talk generally made up of questions like "Do you like India?"....."How did you like the spicy Indian food?"....the topic changed to their names.
Chinese people most often adopt an alternate name, since most Americans and Europeans cannot pronounce their names correctly. It is also common for Indians to adopt a similar technique, once abroad, to make it easy for their friends and collegues to call them there. So, Subashish becomes 'Sub', Shrikanth become 'Sunny' and Krishna becomes 'Kris'....
It was there that the I realized that 'Micheal' was actually 'Zhang' and 'Linda' was 'Peiye'. I wasn't able to catch Steve's Chinese name. Linda went to explain that Chinese writing is all about strokes and each alphabet, as such, is made up of multiple strokes and actually represents a whole word. So, 'Hello' is just one alphabet.
I couldn't resist my excitement and had to ask Linda to write my name in Chinese. There was an obvious gap in communication and hence, Linda smiled replied back saying "Yes, I will give you Chinese name."
"Even better" I thought....
So, that evening during the goodbyes and farewells, Linda told me that she will go back to Shanghai, think of something nice and mail me my Chinese name.
It's not often that people are named twice (and I am not referring to the names that our dear friend and colleagues call us daily)......but, today was my lucky day. As I opened my 'Thunderbird' session this morning, the following email cheered me up:
Hi Prasan,
Chinese name: Pu Shangbo 浦 尚博
Pu is the abbreviation of Shanghai City, because Shanghai has a city river – Huang Pu River.
Shangbo means always working for more knowledge, if you can do like this, you can become the expertise in your field.
I hope you like it.
Regards,
Linda (Peiye)
It's quite amazing how two humans come to recognize each other in such little time. It exemplifies the meaning of 'good friendship'. So, those of you who see some weird Chinese characters next to my name on Gtalk, or orkut or facebook.....please don't be surprised. It's just my Chinese name!!!
Thanks Peiye :)
Comments
A sweet post, btw.