Some of you know me as Santosh and some as Ram. This is not what my parents had in mind when they hoped that I would be multifaceted. All it has done is turn me into a paranoid schizophrenic (my friends Simmi and Amritha will probably lecture me on being a psycho-quack).

I mean, come on, who am I? No, I’m not delving into existential tommy-rot here. My brother’s ‘short’ name is at least related to his official (officious South Indian) ‘long’ name. But me, Santosh -> Ramakrishnan??? Ramakrishnan is my maternal grand-pappy’s name. Poor man died when me mum was 4 I think. If the name’s to preserve his memory, what memory? Mum was too young to have even a fleeting frond of memory of him any way. And then ‘Rama’ and ‘Krishnan’ – named after 2 of Hinduism’s most revered and complex Gods. God I’m not. Revered? Hah 😉 And these 2 characters were/are diametrically opposite in nature. One ram-rod (yes, cheapness of pun wickedly intended) straight and the other…well, flexible, supple…hmmm – not quite straight, anyway. Ergo the modern day Ram/Santosh – paranoid schizophrenic.

Ummm….but that’s not why I started this. Before I started on psychobabble, I wanted to clear the question of identity. What I wanted to tell you was that some of you know me as Santosh and some as Ram. This is not what my parents…Aaahhhgaaahhh!