Project Other Names: A Collection of Fictional Characters

An exercise to explore the different vibes of names used in a story and their relationship with the plot. Captured in a fleeting undefined moment.

Here's also a random picture in case you reached here by accident and find the contents of the page a tad too silly for your time.

The task of assigning names to characters in stories has always been a bit confusing for me. Either they are too eccentric or misplaced, misdirected or just feel like a mouthful. With this exercise I hope I get more comfortable with naming. Okay. Amuse yourself.

#1

“Mutuality isn’t the least bit important in marriage, Ajay. It counts only in romance.”

Ajay gave his pretty paramour a long look. Did she believe this stuff? Or was she playing some deep female game? He knew he would not marry her. He was proud of her, and he enjoyed her company, but she wasn’t what he had in mind for a lifetime partner.

#2

Ankita was all As, in the eleventh grade, an active member of a number of academic clubs and excused from sports for obvious reasons.

Once every two weeks, Ankita met her physician who emptied her pockets of stones and insisted she urinate before stepping on the weighing scale. She had been hospitalised only once in her life, yet her mother was convinced Ankita was never more than a few milligrams away from an emergency hospital visit.

Ankita showed the usual signs of disease. Hair loss. Skin stretched like a thin white membrane over the sharp bones on her face. Her voice as harsh as a saw. But her conversations, unless the subject was her own body mass, was reasonable and intelligent.

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Portrait of a criminal as a young thug

He is five feet and eleven inches tall, hundred and three kgs heavy, with sweaty arms and a glistening moustache, shoulder length black hair oiled and tied into a small ponytail. He has a wild demeanour and suspicious eyes.

Rude Awakening Series: You might find it offensive. But so is the world around us.

It has been one year and nine months since my last entry. A lot has happened since. The dude who used to say “You’re fired” on reality television is now the very real President of United States of A, Delhi beat Beijing to become the most polluted city in the world by a chest-thumping margin, the planet regardless of our skeptical opinions has continued to become warmer - putting the birds and bees out of business. On the other hand, some things haven’t changed. North Korea is still batshit ballistic, China ghost towns are at best dead, Japan is LOCO but still zen, fortunes (as usual) have waxed and waned to the changing tides of tax reforms, share prices and demonetisation.

If there is a hidden lesson over the months that I have learnt, it is this - nothing changes or gets better in this world unless we act (as opposed to react) upon it. And it is with this foolhardy notion that I once again set about to write; to abuse, to anger, with a direct intent to offend the blogosphere. Becau…

Other names: Kaai

#6
Kaai and I had been driving for ten hours straight from Udupi, threading our way through the NH66 which ran all along the western coast. It was a last minute plan put together in all of twenty minutes by Kaai during the tea break. We would drive 700km to the Osho Ashram in Pune to get our hands on the hip new Osho sandals before anyone else in class. It was a bit much but this was 2006 and Osho was all the rage. ‘A little adventure won’t hurt’, he said. Little did we imagine that for one of us, this trip would last a lifetime.

I learned that Kaai was a very spiritual person. He hid that side of himself under rock band t-shirts, ripped jeans and the old bubblegum beret that he refused to part with even while he slept. It took me by surprise when he brought up ‘god’ literally in the middle of nowhere.

We passed a little kid who was throwing stones at the cars on the road.
“Think of it”, Kaai said.
“One day he’s going to throw a stone that will carry out his naïve but horrible in…

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