A-gony

My name is Siddharth Krishnamoorthy.

My name is NOT Siddhartha Krishnamoorthy.

And you wouldn't believe how much trouble I had to go through to hammer that into the standard IIT babu's brain.

When I had collected my provisional degree at St. Stephen's College two years ago, I had noticed that my name had been printed as the latter. I took it back for correction and all they did was to scratch off the vestigial letter with a black pen. It was perhaps my stupidity that I didn't ask for a signature where the scratch was. Little did I know that two years on, I'd be staring at the Deputy Registrar at IIT (secretly grinding my teeth to dust) asking me to get the name changed, the post-graduate section at IIT having slept on it for three whole semesters. I was quite lucky to have discovered that I had been unknowingly rechristened to my Bengali version in the final semester. Three marksheets read "Siddharth Krishnamoorthy" in black printer ink (grossly corrupted Tam(il) Brahm(in) in invisible ink); the fourth suddenly declares "Siddhartha Krishnamoorthy" in black, secretly underlining my Bong associations (the obvious corruption needs no underlining). 

What followed was a wild ride all the way from IIT Delhi to St. Stephen's College (Google maps will show you how the wild ride proceeded. Quite a handy tool, that) to obtain my actual degree, which, if you have studied in Delhi University, you would know takes aeons to materialize and a few more to collect. Thankfully though everything worked out alright. I was able to collect my degree (which looks quite beautiful by the way, what with my correct name on it), rub the IIT babu's face into a photocopy of the same (the degree, not his face) and have my name corrected. A special mention for the services of the Delhi Metro, without which I would veritably have been a piece of (very lean) brown toast on the road. I'm only left asking three questions:

1. Why do they always wake up so late?
2. Why do we graduate in summer, hence creating a need for all the world's documentation in 45 degree heat?
3. Why did I not have enough fuel in my car to run the AC throughout and not enough cash in my pocket to refuel today?

So much for being proud of my long name for 22 years of my life!