Month: July 2007

ManuKhanna.com on iamww.com

I am neither a developer, nor am I a designer, but this hasn’t stopped me from tinkering with WordPress themes developed by other. But never has a theme’s original author liked my customizations to be worthy of a mention. Not until now at least!

Will Wilkins, the developer of the IAMWW w2 WordPress theme has showcased my version of his theme in his IAMWW w2 WordPress Theme Adoptions and Adaptations post. This might not mean much to you, but to me, well, I am flabbergasted. Thanks Will for the mention and obviously the theme.

Also check out his latest WordPress theme, IAMWW w2 DnD, which is quite similar to the original, but is much easier to install as it doesn’t require any plugins to make it look the way it’s supposed to.

Let’s not forget to thank UpstartBlogger the guy who came up with the original idea.

Death Ride to Office

I have been riding my way to office on my scooter for almost ten years now in Mumbai, Delhi, Gorgon, Rohtak, and Chandigarh, but never have I been so frightened of riding my scooter to office.

Every morning when I reach office, I can’t help but thank God for helping me reach my office safely, with all of my 20-something teeth and 206 bones in perfect working conditions. No, I don’t use cannon to blast myself to office; I just have to jostle through the traffic on the roads in Hyderabad.

My office is about 12 kilometers from my home and if I leave any time after 9AM, it can take almost one hour to reach, if I take a relatively unknown and shorter route that is. Buses, trucks, cars, bikes, scooters, cycles, and autos; everybody seems to be gunning for the few feet of empty road in front of the vehicle ahead of them.
Continue reading “Death Ride to Office”

Wrong Pronounciation or Difficult name

I have received several compliments for having a short, and therefore sweet name; Manu Khanna. manu and Khanna, easy to spell, pronounce and memorize. in the past, many acquaintances have suggested that i change my name for two reasons. First, it sounded famine, and second, it sounded unofficial. As you can see, I’ve never paid any heed to any of this and have the same name my grand-father gave me when I was born., Other than these two comments, I’ve never had to correct people if they pronounced my name incorrectly.

But since moving to Hyderabad in 2005, that seems to be the first remark I make when I receive phone calls. I’ve been addressed as munna khan, munan khan, minu khan, mannu khannan and God knows what else. Not a day goes by when I haven’t had t0 tell someone or the other how to pronounce my name. Believe me it’s quite annoying when the locals tell me that my name is a tongue-twister hence they have problems while saying it!

Can you believe it; most Hyderabadis think that “Manu Khanna” is a tongue-twister. If my name is a tongue-twister, what would you term the name Elankulam Manakkal Sankaran Namboodiripad as. I don’t know about you but I would have to twist not only my tongue, but every other muscle in my body just to say it aloud. I don’t even want to think of the consequences if I tried spelling it out. Thank God for Ctrl +C and Ctrl+V, else I wouldn’t have been able to type out this body twister with you.

Here are a few more names that will have you wriggling like a snake:

  • Velikkakathu Sankaran Achuthanandan
  • Kuppalli Venkatappa Puttappa
  • Abul Pakir Jainulbadeen Abdul Kalam

Surely, by now you would be curious why have such difficult names> After all, names should be easy to remember, then why have names that have upwards of 30 alphabets in them? Check out the article on Indian Names over at Wikipedia.