There's something in a name

"I love the story, but why don't you add some colour to the title?" said a longtime friend with literary interests when, a couple of days ago, I asked her to read a short story I had just finished writing and give her opinion. "Doesn't the title fit?" I asked her. "Oh, it does," she said. "There's no doubt about it. But, well, isn't it rather simple?"

It was. Not just simple but banal. And far from being evocative. After a good deal of futile discussion, the title I chose was 'The Smoky World of Aravamuthan.' It was clever and descriptive, but loud and lengthy. If I settled for it, it was because I had grown weary of the title discussion, and I wanted the story to be taken off my hands as soon as possible.

Now that the story has left me and become part of the editor's headache, I can look at the issue of naming with some detachment -- without being distracted by my own story, I mean. A good number of literary masterpieces have very simple titles. Tolstoy's tour de force, which is recognized as one of the greatest novels in world literature, has a plain title: War and Peace. Pasternak's Nobel-Prize-winning novel, Dr Zhivago, is plainer than that. Animal Farm and 1984, the titles of Orwell's famous novels, are matter-of-fact. Don Quixote, Gulliver's Travels, and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer are some of the most fascinating books in world literature, but their titles are colourless.

It is difficult to find a title that is fitting as well as evocative. The Grapes of Wrath, the title of John Steinbeck's famous novel, is at once both. The title, taken from The Battle Hymn of the Republic, is richly evocative of the Apocalypse of John in the Bible. Similarly, If It Die, the title of André Gide's memoir, is reminiscent of St John's Gospel: "Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone: but if it die, it bringeth forth much fruit." The title of Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory brings to mind the doxology chanted at the end of the Lord's Prayer. Here are a few other titles that are evocative: A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Sound and the Fury, The Postman Always Rings Twice, The God of Small Things. And, of course, 'The Smoky World of Aravamuthan'!

“What's in a name?” asked Juliet. While we never tire of quoting her, we believe that there is something in a name. Many of us even believe that there is so much in a name.

Like father, like son

 "My son!" he said grinning from ear to ear. "I want you to meet him."

The young man flashed a big and bright smile that outshone his nanna's grin and put out his hand to shake mine. He looked bent and frail, and his lean and hungry look reminded me of Cassius. The father left us with an expression of accomplishment on his face.

The young man didn't seem to believe in exchanging pleasantries beyond a perfunctory handshake. He didn't even allow me to introduce myself. He got down to business. He spoke about himself. He spoke about his wife. He spoke about his job in Germany. He spoke about German society of which, he was at pains to point out, he was part. He spoke about German culture vis-à-vis himself. And he spoke about the German language -- his own mastery of it rather.

The monologue went on, and it seemed like an eternity. Somewhere a cell phone rang. Behind me a car screeched to a halt, a dog yelped as if hurt, and someone cursed. Now the electronic bell from the control room let off a piercing scream announcing the lunch break, and students spilled out of classrooms. There was an outbreak of riotous laughter in the corridor in front of me. Teachers were pushing their way through the crowd. The attendant came and asked me if he could close the door and turn the AC on. I shook my head and smiled ruefully.

But nothing disturbed the young man's tapas; he spoke and spoke, completely absorbed in himself. "In any given week," he was intoning when I turned my attention to him, "I find myself at the Frankfurt Airport waiting to catch a flight to London or Paris or New York or Abu Dhabi."

"Or Vatican City or Monaco," I added two airportless cities. He paused reflectively for a moment and then smiled in affirmation.

"You're just like your father," I said, determined not to lose that opportunity. "The yarns you spin are as enchanting as his."

This was completely lost on him. Just as I had expected. He picked up where he left off and launched into yet another lengthy account of his work. "In my company, my..."

Ten minutes passed and the speaker was still gabbling away. I rose from behind my desk, stretched my cramped limbs, yawned wearily, and checked my cell phone. But the gasconade continued. I gazed fixedly at the huge clock in front of me on the wall and said in a firm tone of voice, "If you will excuse me..."

This worked. The speaker suddenly remembered an online meeting he was scheduled to address in a few minutes. He didn't, of course, leave without blabbering about the importance of the meeting.

"How did you find my son?" asked the father when he met me in the evening expressly for this purpose.

"Oh, he's just like you," I said. "A great speaker," I added after a moment's pause.