Identity crisis

Nicknaming people is a real good fun activity. What makes it so is that it's something so much more personalized than one's own name. It's something that comes from people knowing each other at a much more open and intimate level.. and that all of it is meant to be in good jest makes it all the more special...

Nicknames are easiest when it's the shortened version of the persons real name...
But quite often nicknames come about from people's physicality...
So if someone is short, they are conveniently called chottu...but more often dhed phoot, dhaii phoot, tingu
And if you are tall, then lambu, khamba...
One isn't spared for having to wear spectacles. The words battery, dapphnya follow you wherever you go. I still remember the chant of "double battery single power, haath mein roti muh mein chawal". *sigh*
If you are a size larger than the rest...the list tends to be endless...
Ditto when you are a size THINNER...
Most of this stuff happened while at school.

However i have had one such in-my-face experience too. Not so long ago i'd been for a college trip to Sikkim and towards the end we'd all exchanged telephone numbers and email ids [This is the pre-Orkut and pre-FB era]. So once we were back to where we belonged -- and given that college was still a long time away from re-opening, we'd gotten into the mode of emailing one another, exchanging photos and the likes.

Likewise, i followed suit.
One fine day i sat down to check my mail and went through some of the replies i'd received. One such mail has left a lasting impression on me... What had happened was that since we'd been a group of 80 odd people from different streams and batches we weren't quite acquainted with one another even after those 10 days. If we'd remembered a face, we'd forgotten the name and vice-versa.
Given this background, i still continue to be amused by what one of them had to say -- or rather, ask by way of replying to my mail...and i quote:
"Are you the fat one or the stick with specs?"