I saw an Interview of Kunal Nayyar when i was at the Slutzker Center. I wondered what’s this Indian Guy doing in American Television and asked Abhijeet. Abhijeet Bhanoori, one of my colleague cum friend at the Slutzker Center, told me that he is an Actor in the famous SitCom “The Big bang Theory”! He said that it is really good. I have been hearing about many TV series like 24, HIMYM, Scribs, etc etc for a long time now but I haven’t had any time to watch any of that – until now. As I write, I have finished watching all of season 1 and am going through the season 2 of  TBBT.

For the benefit of those who have not seen or heard of “The Big Bang Theory”, the show focuses on the life of two geek roommates, Leonard and Sheldon. Their IQs add up to 360 combined but they have no clue as to how to interact with people beyond their circle. Penny is a hot blonde who moves into the apartment across their hall. Leonard is immediately interested in her (saying “our babies will be smart and beautiful”), but Sheldon feels his friend is chasing a dream he’ll never catch (adding “not to mention imaginary”). I have to say, these Hilarious dialogs and Kaley Cuoco(Penny) got me hooked to the Series!

Leonard Hofstadter, Sheldon Cooper, Howard Wolowitz, Rajesh Koothrapalli, Penny are the main characters in the Series. Jim Parsons who plays Sheldon has been nominated for the Emmy Award. All the Cast, the dialogs and everything in the series is really good. Though i can’t understand the Physics part, it is still hilarious how they interact with each other. The Third Season is going to begin this September, and I can’t wait to see if that’s as good – or better – than the first two!

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There are times when all of a sudden, scenes from my life flash in my mind. Right from my childhood to the present, everything! It feels like a movie fast forwarded from the first scene and exactly stopping at whatever i am doing at that time. And at that moment I feel like why am i doing this? Why am i attending school? Studying? For whom am i doing this? Why does my dad earn for the family? Why me and my brother go to school? Why does everyone in the world do the same? What next? What is the purpose of this all? Knowledge? Money? Love? Pleasure? When all the scenes come to an end, i feel my head whirling for a few seconds and after that i come back to my senses! I have never really thought in detail about all this. I just forget it and get back to whatever i was doing.

Today i thought of writing about it and put my thoughts down in paper… er… Blog. I would like to quote this verse from the Bhagavad Gita, ‘You came empty handed, you will leave empty handed.’ This is what i come to realize after some thinking. Happiness is what we live for. It is what our hearts and entire being craves for! Virtually everything we do, every activity we engage in, is geared towards making us or the others around us happy. The Pursuit of Happyness!

The Name is R. Vivek Shanmugam. To know more about my name, go ahead and read the entire post (at your own risk)!

Before we go into all this, let us first see what is the naming convention in Tamil Nadu (the State in India where i hail from). Many Tamils use a “Vilasam”. That gives the initials (a syllable in Tamil) of the person’s paternal ancestors up to, say, seven generations. This keeps every one readily identifiable. For example, in a reasonably sized community Mu. Ko. Ka. Mu. Tha. Er. Ganesh would be the cousin of Mu. Ko. Ka. Mu. Tha. Ka. Ganesh. This form of naming is not used anymore. We just have one initial and that is of the Father. But, when we are at a traditional celebration or function in our Ancestral Temples, they still use this format followed by Chettiar (the Caste Name) to officially call out the Person.

When the initial is expanded it refers to the name of the father, and not the person bearing the name. So the final name in the sequence is the actual given name of the individual and first name stands for the father. For example, C. V. Raman (who won the 1930 Nobel Prize in Physics for his work on the scattering of light and for the discovery of the Raman effect) was from Tiruchirappalli, a town in South India. His full name is Chandrashekhara Venkata Raman (C. V. Raman); Raman is the given name of the nobel laureate, and Chandrashekharan is his father’s name. Raman is not the family name of the nobel laureate, as many in Europe and the US mistakenly believe.

Usually the father’s initial is used with the given name. This Initial is expanded and used only in legal documents such as passports, court proceedings and wills. For more details, check this wiki article.

In some parts of Tamil Nadu, we have the habit of naming the first two male children after the Grandfathers and the female children after the Grandmother. So, i am named after my Grandfather. And as you have read about the concept of initials, i was also given the initial of my Dad i.e. R. And so my official name is R. Shanmugam. This is what they entered while registering me in the School. My mom named me Vivek and everyone in the family, the relatives and those who know me in any way other than School call me Vivek.

Now, what does my name mean? The Name Vivek is quite common all over India. It has its origin in Sanskrit and it means  Wisdom or the Power to discern between Right and Wrong. I could also have been named after Swami Vivekananda. Shanmugam is one of the many Names of Lord Murugan, in South India. This name is common only to the Tamil Speaking population of India. Many Tamils will have the name or the variations of the name of this God, like for example Karthik, Saravan, etc.

So two common names make a unique name! I know it must have been too confusing to understand this post. I apologize! The Conclusion here is that I prefer my name to be “R. Vivek Shanmugam” and that is the reason for naming my website this way. You can call me by whatever name you feel comfortable with.