It's Ameya. No, No... It's Ameya

A few weeks back the Times Of India – Goa edition was flooded with ads from a car manufacturer. Right from the front page to every alternate page thereon it had bought out the newspaper space to advertise itself. Needless to say the marketing department must have shelled out more than a few million dollars to grab the place on the newspaper and thereon grab the attentions of more than millions of TOI readers, only a small fraction of which could turn out to be prospective buyers. The high end and top-notch technology laden cars that the manufacturer was selling, I wondered whether it was a right strategy that they had followed to showcase their plethora of products. My half-baked (if I may say so ;)) MBA knowledge inclusive of the interesting and truly involving “Integrated Marketing communication” lectures that I attended professed that when a product is from a niche segment involving state-of-art technology and coupled with a price tag which only the “most blessed” section of the society could afford, then one should resort to direct marketing. Direct Marketing is the term given to the practice of reaching out to individual prospective customer and then marketing him the product as per his taste and specification. This made pure sense to me as it was very rational to follow this approach and not go for a mass-marketing through newspapers especially when each square inch of the prized newsprint space cost a bomb and could potentially burn a hole in the pocket to the tune of millions.

When the rule of directed marketing is so crystal clear, which even I can recite without flipping back through my notes, what propelled the marketing team into such a major Gaffe? After all they aren’t richly paid only to commit such a costly mistake; leave aside the major PR blunder that come alone. “No ways! The marketing team at this automotive giant aren’t this big a fool” I unknowingly said to myself . This very inquizitive thought made rerun through the entire series of ads once again and there I found the purpose for them follow this means of advertisement.

The reason was there right on the front page, which inadvertently I had missed during my first run through these Volkswagen ads. The line in bold read “Its Volkswagen. No, No... Its Volkswagen”. The foundation level course in German language that I had cleared with flying colours had ensured that I wasn’t the intended target audience for this catch line. A second read along with the small assisting para beneath it cleared all aspertions that I had regarding this marketing strategy. Here was this Deutsche major taking to get a strong foothold into our nation with their quality products. But before all this, they were onto a campaign which would set their brand identity firm into the people’s psyche. And how could they achieve that without getting the people to pronounce their name right. I am unsure about the etymology of it, but blame it on the Germans who pronounce “V” as “F” ( as per Indian pronounciation). Reminds of the awesome shahid kapoor in his movie ‘Kaminey’ wherein he were mischievously proclaims “mein fha ko fha bolta hoon”. On second thoughts VW could have used his character to get their name right into the Indian Psyche. Who better than a bollywood actor to influence the Indian masses? Thus I was really pleased eventually by their attempt to make the people pronounce ‘volkswagen’ as ‘Folkswagen’ (as it is actually supposed to be) meaning “people’s car”.

After this rather very long prelude, let me get to the core topic of this blog which deals with my personal identity crisis. Very much as VW suffered with mispronounciation, so has been me right from the time of my birth. It was the difference in the way ‘V’ is pronounced in the different parts of the globe for Volkswagen that proved its nemesis; for me it was the extra ‘a’ (or is it?) that did me in. As it has been a very much prevelant practice in this part of the world, my parents named me “Ameya “ (अमेय in devnagari script) which is one of the numerously infinite names of the elephant headed god, Ganapati.

Needless to say I was way too young and worse still very much ignorant of these happenings in regards to my naming ceremony to fight with my parents then. But that only meant I had to fight with the majority of the people I encountered till date getting to make them pronounce my name right. My parents had very lovingly bestowed with this nice name (which I personally love too 8)) thinking that I would have showcase all the virtues of the original bearer of the name; and so I did to a great extent if not all (I would rather say that with a tinge of modesty ;)).

On face-value it doesn’t look too tough to pronounce, but in reality I had been struggling to cope up with the numerous variants that I encounter when interacting with fellow planet-mates. The most common variant being the ones over-stressing of suffixing ‘A’ in my name. The way they pronounce it, makes me feel as if I have a stream of never-ending ‘A’s tailing my spelling (i.e. AmeyAAAAA.... and it goes on... :( ). I do emphasise to them the trailing ‘A’ in my name doesn’t have the tilde over it and thus spared from the hard sound (i.e. AA अमेया in devnagari) but it doesn’t seem to be effective convincing tactic from my side. For me it gets doubly tough when I come across instances (read people) of AMEYA without the trailing ‘A’, and then it’s just like fighting a losing battle. And to my bad fortune, I have many such instances of AMEY (with the trailing A missing), one at college, two at office, and many more in routine life :( . Their existence meant I had to back off and accept that my name is a typo (since birth :() and only justification being the trailing ‘A’ is silent. But even for that there are a handful few who don’t let go the chance to pull my leg and call me with the extended version of my name “AMEY with the silent A”.

The irony of the extra ‘A’ (or otherwise) is a bit bearable and I could blame it upon the inconsistency/incompatibility of English alphabets in the devanagari script (Spare me for dragging my feet into the Devanagari v/s Roman scripts tussle). But my plight doesn’t end there. Still struggling with the mysterious instance of ‘A’ in my name, I was stunned when I came across a superior at my workplace. He seemingly had donned the shakespherean hat and had conveyed to our international clients his prophecy. He said to them and I quote “All Indian feminine names ends with a ‘A’”. I had a tough time before I cleared the doubts in their mind about my gender. Although I was damn sure what my manager has professed was blatant lie and a brainchild of his own; but the todays corporate world is such that whatever your manager says is the rule. So I consoled myself by self-proclaiming my name as just a one off exception to his rule without totally discarding his hypothesis. I don’t know whether this existence of exception to his rule put him off, but he never awarded me any extra brownie points during the appraisal cycle.

Then there exists the variant of my name like AMAY ( अमय in devnagari) I don’t know where that came from. But I still have a handful of my friends calling that. I don’t know whether its the ease of calling by that name that acts as a motivation to them but surely they have slipped into a comfort zone calling me by that name and I don’t see them changing it soon. This is not all and the weirdest version is yet to come. Rewinding back to my kinder-garten days and I remember my teachers calling me ‘AMBEY’ (where the hell that 'B' came from?). I even have a certificate at some drawing competition featuring that name. Anybody would have doubted whether it was actually me who achieved that laurel at the drawing competition back then, if they are unaware of the moderate talent that I possess even now. I was probably too young, too timid, and too ignorant to fight with argue with my teachers and must have not gauged what lie ahead. Probably that was just precursor to lie in stores for me.

So here I am, with more than a quarter of my life on earth behind me and still struggling with the identity. I won’t say it’s a identity crisis but still it’s not a very pleasing experience if someone don’t pronounce your name right. So humble requests to all the readers of this, for you are the only people who are aware of my plight and surely you can help me a bit. Not by anything else, but just by calling me by my name, ‘the right way’.

Its simple. It's Ameya. No, No... It's Ameya

Yup, you got it right. Thanks :)