Will you change your name for luck?

Unlike me, Indian movie stars and politicians are superstitious and keep changing their name hoping their luck will change for the better.

Casting directors keep harassing the actors, either saying, you are too thin, or too fat, or your skintone isn’t right, and then comes the time to change even the name, or if there is a lot of resistance to that, then at least add a few letters in the name.

It seems male actors are more superstitious than the women, maybe because they have a lot to lose if the movie tanks at the box office and their name would be mud, so to speak, among the general public, who hate watching a movie for three, four hours and slowly beginning to realise the story is going nowhere, and that too after paying tons of money for snacks (this is pre-Covid times).

How many of you would have added a letter or two to make your name to look like this: ‘Hrithik’, changing it from the earlier no-fuss and friendly, ‘Rithik’, because numerologists suggested it would bring you luck?

The only way to pronounce Hrithik, is if you pick up your tongue with your fingers and place a pebble underneath and then touch the top of your palate with the tip of the tongue, and then say the name.

‘orrible ain’t it? You just can’t pronounce his name now without looking like a goldfish coming up to the water’s surface in the fish bowl, to blow bubbles.

Numerologists are important people in India, and all of them are ‘famous’. If you glance through the online adverts for numerologists, all of them say the same thing about themselves, that they are ‘famous’.

“Madam so-and-so, the famous one, will solve all your problems. Having financial problems (your wife ran away with the grocery delivery guy after emptying the joint account), marital problems (your husband ran away with the maid, or your mother-in-law refuses to go back to her village after living with you since the country’s independence), or career problems (your boss always gives HER the promotion, not YOU), then we have just the solution for you.”

Just as the so-called ‘holy men’ get great respect and awe from politicians, numerologists hold court in Bollywood, and suddenly, you have Rani Mukherjee removing the H from her second name, or Vivek Oberoi turning into Viviek, or Javed Jaffrey to Jaafrey or Kareina becoming Kareena.

I once read an article by a numerologist who said that numbers have great “vibrations”, and asked me to add up the letters in my first name and add up letters in the last name, and then add up the two numbers. That is your lucky and favourable number, he said.

For quite a few years in my life I kept on adding things to try and find out if it is good for me. “Tomorrow, is the final exam. Tomorrow is Monday the 5th. Monday has 6 letters, and then add five the date, that comes to 11, and one plus one, is two.”

I didn’t know what the number 2 signified. Then revelation hit me and then I realised I had to take Bus No. 2 to the exam venue for me to pass the exam with flying colours.

During my early days in Canada, fellow immigrants suggested that I should change my name because the name could be the reason why I was not getting a job in my field of work. There were plenty of jobs, such as cleaning after the elephant poops in the zoo enclosure, but nothing in journalism or writing or editing.

This was nothing to do with superstition or numerology or changing a few letters, it was changing the whole name and shortening it and changing the whole course of your life. For instance, immigrants from the south of India with long names suddenly turned into Sid or Jaycee.

How can I change my name? I told my acquaintance. “It is what I am. After consulting with my wife, I changed my name to Sabs, and she now giggles every time she calls me.

Mahmood Saberi is a storyteller and blogger based in Bengaluru, India. Twitter: @mahmood_saberi