WHAT IS IN A NAME ?

   What is in a name ?

Those days I used to pursue my French course with all seriousness in The Central Institute of English and Foreign languages , Hyderabad. Every year, we were required to be in the institute for eight weeks for the contact programme.  In the course of the year, we would send our monthly assignements and get back the corrected answer sheets. We were quite friendly with the administrative staff of the institute. This piece is concerned with my unintended brush with one of the staff.

No doubt the gentleman has a name. All my problem has originated because of his name. I don't agree with Shakespeare when he says, "What is in a name? A rose is a rose is a rose by whatever name  it is called. It was late December 1986.I was busy sending New Year Greeting cards to all my friends.  This gentleman was also in my list.  He was actually the personal secretary to the Director. I promptly sent a card to him so that by first January he could receive it.

During the first week of January,  I started receiving letters of thanks from many people to whom I sent the greetings.

But the letter from the gentleman was different in its tone and tenor. Will you believe that he was greatly hurt by whatever I sent to him? This is what had happened.

On the envelope, I spelt his name as Muhammad Zaleel. The culprit in this episode is the single letter "Z".Instead of putting sugar in the tea, if you put cyanide, imagine what would happen. The man was furious. He shot off an angry missive which breathed  fire and brimstone. The word Zaleel has a very bad connotation, referring to worst characters. He was actually JALEEL and not Zaleel. Remember 
Jaleel has the opposite meaning . It means , " exalted " 

Ignorance of law is no excuse.

Similarly, ignorance of language is no excuse.

I am surely guilty of taking JALEEL to be Zaleel.

The unfortunate episode taught me  to be very careful in using languages.

Sayee Jayaraman 

07/02/2015.