Your Friendly Philosopher & Guide

I was born in a small town called Tiruppur, also known as the knitting city of India, close to Coimbatore, in a tiny Government hospital. And thankfully, when I was 8 years old, I had an opportunity to meet the nurse who attended to my mom during delivery. It was an exciting feeling to meet someone who saw you the first ? even before your mom.

My dad was away in Bombay working for MTNL, when I was born. An astrologer himself, he always felt that people who had their names that starts or ends with letters ?R? or ?I? make it BIG in their lives ? and he supported his views with examples of ? Indira Gandhi, Mahatma Gandhi, Ronald Reagen, Rajiv Gandhi to name few.

Those were the days of ?Trunk Calls?, and you had to yell on the phone to convey your message. My mom called my dad to say she has delivered a baby boy, and to ask about what should she name the child. My dad asked her to choose a name, which ends with the letter ?I?. My mom isn?t English literate nor my grandma is. They sat and discussed. My grandfather always had few photos of great leaders hanging in his house, and John F Kennedy was one of them. My grandma looked at JFK?s photo and suggested my mom to name me Kennedy, which AT LEAST sounded like having an ?I? at the end.

My mom liked the name, and wanted to stick to it. She realized the spelling error only when she came back to Bombay to live with my father after 3 months. It was too late to change the name now. My dad came out of with an idea, let us change ?Y? to ?I?. And they registered my name as G. Kennedi in the birth certificate.

In fact my dad had to get few legal affidavit from the court to prove to the school, during admission that I belonged to a Hindu family, even while my name sounded very Christian.

I wouldn?t say there was perfect harmony at home about which religion our family should follow. We had two prayer rooms ? one with Lord Ganesha, Saraswathi & Narayana, and the other with Jesus, Mary and St Antony. We, my 2 elder sisters and me, never bothered about these forms until it was exam times. We took blessing from both the gods so that we don?t forget the essential while writing exams.

My mom wanted us all to follow Christianity hence she baptized us. I was baptized as John G Kennedi, which my father isn?t aware till date. And I am not sure if he bumps into my blog someday!

For now I use G. Kennedi ? G stands for Gopalan - my father?s name. And incidentally I came to know that Kennedy wasn?t a name at all, it is a family name ? like Indians use surnames like Iyer, Iyangar, Rao!