Ghatotkatch

Just in case you are wondering why this blog url is ghatotkatch, here's a brief for you.

Let me clear myself at this time. I am not at all worried about my name being one of the most commonplace one. Nope. But it does spell trouble when you try to create a personal email id. How? Read on.

Ever since I was introduced to emails, I wanted a nice looking email-id for me like my friends had. There used to be some emails like their actual full name or cool_name or some funky words (like I remember one of my lean and usually cool as ice friend had this email id diabolical@). Now one of my friend (who already had a email id) was helping me to get started with his tried and tested (and used by myriad people) email provider. After few tutorials of email basics and connecting to internet using modem, I was ready.

Obviously some one was real faster than me and I did not get my first name @emailprovider.com id. I was convinced it is probable, or more than that, obvious. "It is because the internet is too popular".

I tried with full name. No result. "Fine again. There must be hundreds of people with my name".

With cool_firstname. No result. "Because email ids are free, people usually sign up for more than one id".

With just initials. No result. "Hey come on. Its only 3 letters."

With lastNamefirstName. No result. "Uh Oh!"

My friend was getting bit worried. I was, worse still, getting impatient. "Lets try with some nick names." We played around nicks for a while. No result. "Ok. How about celebrities?" Elvis Presley? James Bond? Daffy Duck? Naaah!

Exasperated and out of clues, we sat hopelessly for a while. Then suddenly he sprang to life and typed ghatotkatch as the user id. I looked at him blankly. Ghatotkatch? For those who don't know, he is a mythological giant from a ancient Indian epic. To call me ghatotkatch was something similar calling Mickey Mouse a Brontosaurus. But much to my dismay, it did not give any error, and I got this virtual identity.

Ghatotkatch would have surely fainted at his downfall on that day!!

signing off,