What's in a name.. chap 2

Us Indians sure do put in a lot of hard work into choosing names for children.. Here are some of the rules that seem to exist:

1. If the first child's name ends in 'a' then the second child's must too. Why? So they'll rhyme obviously..like Duh!
Ex: Varsha and Nisha
Mridusmita and Sushmita
Abhilasha and Upasana
Karishma and Kareena
Suresh and Mahesh
Amitabh and Ajitabh
Surabhi and Prachi
Sunny and Bobby

(My own mother wanted to name me Pallavi solely for the purpose of rhyming with my sister's name - Kundhavi. And she would have too, if not for my grandpa who studied the stars and insisted my name start with 'Bha'... Nowadays she regrets that she didn't name us Shakti and Jyoti.. such powerful names.. and they rhyme too!)

2. If your children are of different sexes, no problem. Make them have the same first letter(s). If you can somehow make them sound the same, even better! You probably get more points..
Ex: Kunal and Karishma
Nidhi and Nikhil
Akshi and Akshay
Richa and Rishabh

Ranbir, Reema, Rishi, Ritu and Rajeev (the Kapoors)

3. Sometimes the parents decide to ingeniously mix up their own names and bestow upon their progeny a completely unique name:
Prabhakaran + Revathy = Prabhavathy
Asha + Amit = Amisha + Ashmit

There was a movie "Om Jai Jagdish", where the mother names her three sons 'Om', 'Jai', and 'Jagdish' respectively. This was a well thought out plan because whenever she called to all three of them, she would be chanting 'Om Jai Jagdish' [- thats a mantra for all you ignoramuses (ignorami??)]. This woman would probably have kept having kids until she got 3 sons so she could carry out her evil plan to get in God's good graces.. It made me wonder if this was based on a true story... certainly seems nutty enough to be..