Being in a room with around 15 women, all called “Anita”, turned out to be quite a novel experience. Like we all joked, it was one occasion when we didn’t have to remember any names!
This happened in February 2010 during a trip to Delhi and Gurgaon. A rather diverse bunch, brought together by Delhi based photographer Anita Khemka who is working on a project called “Being Anita”.
I have never actually thought much about my name. I have, on a handful of occasions, wondered about how it would be like to have an exotic name instead of the plain vanilla “Anita”. But over the years, I’ve gotten used to it. Now, I quite like my name — I’ve made peace with it. And if you’ve noticed, the the trend of naming girl babies as Anita has declined rapidly over the years. Which means, the name will be quite a rarity soon. The advantage is that it’s hard to shorten the name so I don’t have too many nicknames. At the very worst, it could be called “Ann” or “Annie” — neither of which I like and thankfully no one calls me by those names. I have a few people who call me by my surname, which I don’t like either. I actually just prefer my name — it’s simple, easy to pronounce and just…“plain”.
The other advantage is that when you’re travelling, you don’t have to make much of an effort to pronounce your name and spell it out so people can comprehend it. It’s a name that seems to exist in many cultures and across geographies. I have a friend who uses my name to book tables at restaurants since her name is too exotic. So I’ve probably been at many dinners without actually being there in person.
So coming back to my tryst with the “Anitas” — it was well worth the effort of making it to the Maximum Store, our venue for the rendezvous — on a rather pleasant evening.
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What I realised after the conversations with these diverse women was the passion that they had about whatever it is that they’re into. I met Anita Bhargava, who’s a passionate runner and is now equally passionate about cleaning Delhi in a day, the very articulate Anita Thapar Kathpalia of Fab India. Then there was Anita Vasudevan who wears many hats, including that of an entrepreneur and a writer. There was Anita Roy — British Indian — she had given up using a car many years ago and now gets around on her trusted steed — her bicycle!
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An artist of repute, Anita Trehan, Anita Lobo, an aspiring sports entrepreneur and Anita Nigam, an astrologer amongst many others!
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Such interesting women — it’s no wonder that the evening flew by pretty quickly. Anita Khemka (who is documenting all the Anitas through photographs) shared some of her images in a slideshow and then we continued with a round of introductions over chai and snacks.
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An evening well spent with my namesakes!
how wonderful to meet so many namesakes? must have been a fun evening.…
Posted by arundati | April 9, 2010, 2:38 pmThat’s a Nice Social Thought..
Yahoo! it self has 20 odd Anita’s..
Cool!
Posted by Mithun Ashok | April 9, 2010, 5:22 pmAnita Khemka is one of my favourite Indian photographers. I’d trust her to come up with a simple yet brilliant idea like this!
Posted by Mahesh Shantaram | April 9, 2010, 6:02 pmwow.. thatz an interesting gang..
Posted by Yuva | April 9, 2010, 8:50 pmHi Anita,
I have been a lurker on your blog for a long time now. This one prompted me to comment though. Like Mahesh above said, this is a really simple but great idea. Would love to meet my namesakes some day. Not too many I reckon here in North America. Oh wait, I might be wrong about that :D
Kudos for maintaining such a cool blog and more importantly, keeping it so dynamic :)
Posted by Praveen | April 10, 2010, 1:11 amwow…such a fun and novel concept…does she have plans of doing some more using other names?
would love to see the compilation and congratulations to you for being a part of this elite group.
BTW, we have a ‘common’ friend..its a very small world indeed.
Posted by sukanya | April 10, 2010, 2:00 ami am amazed at the different projects/things (for the lack of a better word) you seem to get involved with/invited to! :)
definitely a novel idea.
Posted by Ms.N | April 16, 2010, 7:15 pmHiya Namesake!
I’ve been meandering for a while and just landed on this post.
What a wonderful recap of a novel evening.
Thanks much!
And off I go again.
Cheers,
Anita Lobo
Posted by Anita Lobo | May 8, 2010, 8:42 pmHey Anita,
cool writing and you are a born blogger I must say.
btw, I am running a portal for bloggers.
My Edition(www.myedition.co.in), a platform for passionate bloggers to blog, make friends and Earn. If you are interested, do sign up and you can post the same contents over there and redirect to your blog/posts.
Love to see you there…
Posted by Ashwaty | May 9, 2010, 2:38 amIt was such a wonderful experience to meet Anita’s from different fields and the credit goes to Anita khemka that she came up with such a unique and wonderful idea.
Posted by Anita trehan | May 14, 2010, 5:32 pmIt was wonderful meeting up with you and all the other Anitas! We were quite an interesting and varied bunch:) May see you at the Bangalore Ultra
Posted by Anita Bhargava | June 21, 2010, 8:09 pmwhoa. random concept. queerly fun.
Posted by malvika | November 19, 2010, 6:46 pm