I was named after a neighbor’s kid.

I was around three years old. I was supposed to join a school and my parents needed a name for me. The sacred quest to find a name for me was bestowed upon my cousin. Being the smartest kid in the family he went through gigantic repository of names. Source of this repository were names of students in his class, names of students in his elder sister’s class, names of students in his yet another elder sisters class and names of students in classes of all his cousins. Man! he was really smart to remember these many names.

His mother, my aunt, suggested to choose a name which starts with alphabet ‘A’ so that I can be amongst the first kids in roll call. But this suggestion soon received a veto from her daughter. Reason provided was – “it is difficult to do proxy attendance when you are amongst first students to be called.” So, the team of worthy knights decided that my name should start with alphabet ‘M’ or ‘N’. I was never told how they ended up with choosing their neighbor’s kid’s name as a name for me. I believe they must have forgotten about the brain storming session anyway. Or may be aliens came in a space ship suggested them this name and wiped out their memory of other details.
That is how I got my name when I entered a school, a last, three years after I was born: Nishu Goyal.

My name isn’t the end of the story about my name. When your name is Bob no one asks you. How do you spell that? Isn’t that more like a girl’s name? Not so with Nishu Goyal.

In my college days my friend who was also my next door neighbor, my bench mate, my branch mate, told me about his disappointment when he realized that the person he will be spending most of his time during classes is a guy. He apparently scanned list of freshers very well for all instances of fairer sex. Same sort of disappointment was confessed to me by teaching assistants, guys who came for college campus placements as recruiters, guys who joined the job along with me. List goes on.

But there was one good thing about my name.

I believed – it sort of uniquely belonged to me. If you google search for ‘Nishu Goyal’ you will find this blog. Not a big deal. But still. What is the chance that you will meet someone with name ‘Nishu Goyal’.

Well if you really look hard. You can find another ‘Nishu Goyal’ on linkedin. And what are the odds that my company owner goes to IIT Bombay for campus recruitment and hires her. I can’t even end the post saying – think about it.