What's in a name

Few days back, I received an official press release from Vijender, the boxer’s sponsors. It informed all the concerned persons that the surname of the boxer was not Kumar but Singh. It was news. We all thought that barring Anthresh Lalit Lakra, all other members of the Indian boxing contingent at the Beijing Olympics were Kumars.

If three of them (two of them Kumars, Akhil and Jitender) had not gone so far in the competition, Singh, Kumar or Kumari needless to say wouldn’t have mattered. But since the news channels had no option but give the trio more air-space than Mahendra Singh Dhoni, the sponsors thought it was their duty to rectify the mistake. It was of no use.

In the days to follow, commentators and experts kept calling the boxer Vijender Kumar. In a situation like this, it’s always risky to rectify the mistake and go with the correct name because people will think that the correct name is the incorrect one.

What if this was a cricketer? What Vijender has achieved will never be achieved by any cricketer. But in India, obscure cricketers, who probably represented India in a handful of one-day matches with their mediocrity, will be regarded as bigger names than that of Vijender or Akhil.

I was in-charge of the sports section of a weekly Bengali magazine back home in Calcutta (I prefer Calcutta over Kolkata) which later became a daily. Working for a small magazine is fun in as much as one has the liberty to do things his way. Then there was the circulation i.e the readership part. People in the circulation department used to come up with inflated figures and also used to tell us which articles or write-ups were more appreciated than the rest or the sections that were preferred over other sections. There was no reason to believe them and even though they were the smarter lot compared to the editorial guys when it came to the outside world, the editorial guys had a better upbringing to know that they were lying.

Nonetheless, readers used to call up and ‘aspiring' mass comm students used to turn up for jobs. Interacting with the readers was another funny part. Funny because firstly, it caused immense satisfaction to know that we were read. Secondly, some of these readers came across as serious ones and they used to make us wonder why the seriousness. Lol.

One of the readers called to speak to the sports editor one day. When I answered the call, he told me that he was a dedicated reader of the sports section and that he somehow couldn’t manage to get his hands on the 5th, 8th, 10th, 11th, 14th, 17th and 19th issue. I was overwhelmed! I promised him all the editions once he showed up at our office which he did after a couple of days. I went to the storeroom and came back with all the back issues and another special issue, not specifically asked for by him, since the cover story was on cricket and there were quite a few interesting articles. He took a look and discarded the special issue. Then he discarded some of the issues that he had previously asked for after a cursory glance. Confused, I asked him what was the deal. He said that he was looking for the sports quiz section and nothing else interested him. The issues discarded by him did not have the section. I found out that his apparent interest in our magazine had something more to it than pure readers' interest. The guy was an amateur quiz master and while the norm among them was to participate in quizzes and collect questions, he opted for the easier way.

Another reader used to write letters to the office regularly. One day, he called up and expressed his desire to meet all of us (it was me) in the sports department. This person had no vested pecuniary interests but he came armed with advices. His first advice was that Saurabh Ghoshal (the squash player) should be given more importance than Sourav Ganguly (the cricketer). I asked him, on his way back from our office, if he accidentally bumped into Ghoshal, whether he would recognize him or not. He said no. I didn’t expect a different answer.

Under these difficult circumstances, the effort by Vijender’s sponsors will have to be lauded. Knowing fully well how futile the exercise was, they did what they could for our national hero. If Vijender decides to hold a press conference at home re-emphasising the fact that he is Singh and not Kumar, we will feel a bit stupid. We laughed when a similar PC was called by Abdul Razzaq (the Pakistani cricketer) clarifying to the media that he was Abdul and not Abdur.