Skip to main content

Janaki told to be Jayanthi


India’s Central Board of Film Certification has directed the makers of a movie to change its title just because it contains the name of Janaki which is a synonym of Sita, the Hindu goddess. Worse still, the Board has demanded a name change for the titular character in the movie too – from Janaki to Jayanthi.

The Government of India is presumably formulating laws banning the use of certain names - like:

·      Rama in zoos: we can’t have monkeys hailing Jai Ram to their leader.

·      Durga in gyms: how can we have Durgas lifting dumbbells?

·      Lakshmi in banks: the goddess of wealth deserves better than being reduced to a finance firm offering 3.5% interest.

You are welcome to give more suggestions if you are a genuine nationalist in India. You can give other valuable suggestions too like the nationalists in West Bengal are demanding a ban on the consumption of fish because fish was one of the incarnations of Lord Vishnu. Beef is associated with Lord Krishna and so it is banned in most states of the country. Pork will be banned since the boar was also an incarnation of Vishnu once.

The name ‘Janaki’ always brought to my mind a woman who was household assistant at my home all through my childhood. She lived nearby and helped my mother with looking after her ten children including me. Janaki was part of our family, so to say. But she was an illiterate widow. If it was now, the nationalists would have given her an option between a different name or death itself. I guess, we shouldn’t have illiterate people named after Hindu gods and goddesses.

Ideally no one should be named after gods and goddesses until they prove that they deserve such names. Imagine a little girl named Lakshmi throwing tantrums and the mother yelling at her: “Hey, Lakshmi, stop being stupid, will you? Else you’re going to get a good spanking from me.” Isn’t that a severe offence against the goddess who might hear such angry reprimands and be hurt?

The government should set up a department like Pradhan Mantri Namakaran Yojana or something which should first approve a name before it is given to a child. When you apply for a name like Ganesh, the website can suggest: “Name Reserved. Try Ganesan?”

Sri Padmanabhaswamy Temple in Thiruvananthapuram has treasures worth INR 1 lakh crore. Tirupati Temple’s wealth is estimated at INR 650 crore. Similarly, there are countless temples which own enormous wealth and they are all running like big businesses. Business is okay but you can’t have a character in a movie named after one of those gods!

I am just imagining a scene. My old friend and supporter Janaki trying to get a passport which is refused because her “name offends national sentiment” and so she is given passport in the name of Jayanthi.

Krishnan Kutty, a friend, is now planning to change his name as K. Rishan Kutty. I'm concerned about Keshav, however.

  

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventures of Toto as a comic strip

  'The Adventures of Toto' is an amusing story by Ruskin Bond. It is prescribed as a lesson in CBSE's English course for class 9. Maggie asked her students to do a project on some of the lessons and Femi George's work is what I would like to present here. Femi converted the story into a beautiful comic strip. Her work will speak for itself and let me present it below.  Femi George Student of Carmel Public School, Vazhakulam, Kerala Similar post: The Little Girl
47 comments
Read more

The Little Girl

The Little Girl is a short story by Katherine Mansfield given in the class 9 English course of NCERT. Maggie gave an assignment to her students based on the story and one of her students, Athena Baby Sabu, presented a brilliant job. She converted the story into a delightful comic strip. Mansfield tells the story of Kezia who is the eponymous little girl. Kezia is scared of her father who wields a lot of control on the entire family. She is punished severely for an unwitting mistake which makes her even more scared of her father. Her grandmother is fond of her and is her emotional succour. The grandmother is away from home one day with Kezia's mother who is hospitalised. Kezia gets her usual nightmare and is terrified. There is no one at home to console her except her father from whom she does not expect any consolation. But the father rises to the occasion and lets the little girl sleep beside him that night. She rests her head on her father's chest and can feel his heart...
18 comments
Read more

The Vegetarian

Book Review Title: The Vegetarian Author: Han Kang Translator: Deborah Smith [from Korean] Publisher: Granta, London, 2018 Pages: 183 Insanity can provide infinite opportunities to a novelist. The protagonist of Nobel laureate Han Kang’s Booker-winner novel, The Vegetarian , thinks of herself as a tree. One can argue with ample logic and conviction that trees are far better than humans. “Trees are like brothers and sisters,” Yeong-hye, the protagonist, says. She identifies herself with the trees and turns vegetarian one day. Worse, she gives up all food eventually. Of course, she ends up in a mental hospital. The Vegetarian tells Yeong-hye’s tragic story on the surface. Below that surface, it raises too many questions that leave us pondering deeply. What does it mean to be human? Must humanity always entail violence? Is madness a form of truth, a more profound truth than sanity’s wisdom? In the disturbing world of this novel, trees represent peace, stillness, and nonviol...
6 comments
Read more

The RSS does not exist

An organisation that has 80,000 branches in India does not exist legally in any document. This is the cover story of The Caravan this month. By the way, The Caravan is one of the very few publications that still continues to exist in spite of being overtly critical of Narendra Modi and his Sangh Parivar. The Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) is not registered as an organisation under any of the usual Indian registration laws such as the Societies Registration Act or as a trust or company. It functions as an unregistered voluntary organisation, though it is arguably the largest public organisation in the country. This situation makes the organisation absolutely unaccountable to anyone, argues The Caravan . The RSS is not legally required to file annual returns to the Tax department or disclose its financial details publicly though it deals with thousands of crores of rupees every year especially after Modi became the Prime Minister of the country. The membership of the organisat...
12 comments
Read more

No Problems Only Opportunities

You’ve probably heard this joke. A young man walked into his office one morning and found a beautiful young lady sitting in his chair. He called the MD and said, “Sir, I have a problem.” The MD replied, “Don’t you know our company’s motto, young man? No Problems, Only Opportunities .” When Suchita of The Blogchatter sent me a mail with the topic of this week’s blog hop –  - the first thing that came to my mind was the above joke. I know many people – too many, in fact – who went through terrible problems. My own life was a series of problems in none of which was there the consolation of any beautiful woman. One essential lesson I learnt from life is that life is a series of problems. You solve one and then arises the next one. Now I have reached an age when problems are no more problems: they are life itself. If you ask me what was the biggest problem I ever dealt with, it was my last years in Shillong. I was a lecturer in a college drawing a fat salary stipulated by the U...
13 comments
Read more