My Name Is Pooja!

A few exciting facts about the name Pooja. Yes, don't look here and there; I’m talking about my own name.

Oh BTW, it can also be spelled as Puja, saves one alphabet and also some paper and lead, in the later years to come.

For starters technically my name means, a prayer, no ways was I a prayer for the Gods!

But otherwise it also means to worship, does is mean I have to be worshipped or should I worship? Well as I still have this confusion, I don indulge in worshipping or let anyone worship me!

           

If you haven’t noticed by now, let me enlighten you, Pani-Puri, pizza, pau-bhaji, petrol, paint and Pooja, all exciting, delicious and interesting things begin with a P.

If I remember correctly there were al the least 2 Poojas in each of my class, every year. Some more in the other sections and divisions, in short the most popular name in the school was undoubtedly, Pooja!

There is this person whom I know of, his best female friend was Pooja, later his girl friend also had the same name, and he married (not his girlfriend) another Pooja! But that’s not all; his younger brother also fell in love and later married a Pooja, this time the same one!

But then coming back to my name, that’s what the blog was supposed to be about in the first place, Pooja Shah Desai, that is Pooja as in my first name, which I have elongated elaborately, brings us to Shah, my maternal name.

The Shah surname which I guess has some origins or roots from some or the other royalties, remember all those Shah Jahans’ and Akbar Shahs that appeared so frequently in our History texts, latest in the list being Shah Rukh Khan. But I have failed badly to try and draw a connection between any of these famous personalities, mainly because they all are Muslims and me a Hindu, as if you dint guess it from the name Pooja.

Here let me also tell you that Shah, if not more, is an equally popular surname amongst the Gujarati clan. It is one surname that the US government is not issuing visas to also.

And if all this was not enough, I married a Desai, now here I will go back on my words above where I said Shah was popular, because there I had not taken into consideration Desai’s popularity.

On the last count, only on facebook, count for number of Pooja was more than 600 and these were only with some mutual friend connection and with pictures, I did not dare find more, so I gave up the idea of finding how many Poojas like spelling their name as Puja!

Number of Pooja Shah also happened to cross the 600 mark, I dint have the inclination to count further.

And now what, u guessed it right, the count of Pooja Desai also crossed the 600 mark. I think there is something with FB which allows only 600 names to be displayed!

And here I was trying to find out, which of my name is more popular! If the government were to start taxing parents for calling their daughter Pooja, they would be lesser debt!!

But all said and done, there are some virtues too in having a name that is so common! I have all the anonymity that I would want, and still use my real name. I can say “My name is Pooja, naam to suna hi hoga!” with more ease than any Rahul!