dhanian?? rikky?? Virgin??(and yes in this we dont capitalize the first letter!!!) Well they are the names of the same guy... And yes that's me!!! This one the most interesting aspects of life in IITM. Once you are here, your "name" is what people here want to call you by and the "nickname" is the name your parents gave you. In fact the tradition is such a long one that , when a alumini of the institute, Shri Kumar Suryanarayana, president(R&D), Biocon,had come to inaugurate Shaastra '05, the director, under whom he had been a student, introduced him as "frenchie", a name which kumar was very proud of would seem funny for an outsider, but life becomes so much simpler with nicks. Take for a example a situation, in our hostel where we have two guys with the same "nicknames",Anand. But the nick system has removed all the confusion. One guy walks like duck ,so ducky is the "name" and the other dude runs to taramani every time he gets the call of nature,so taramani is the "name"!!
I presume that there is science behind this seemingly absurd naming system. It has been proven that our picture memory helps us recollect stuff longer, than by simply reading or reciting it a hundred times. So every nick has a funda, and through that funda(however dirty it may be, it has to be funny!!!) we remember the names of people: spanky; funda: he spanked a girl on the back side at school. Can you forget this guy's name now??The nicks are not restricted to students , some profs( who tend to make sure that they leave a imprint on whom so ever they teach.. You know what I mean!!!) like for example "kballs" is K. balakrishnan, and so on..
Irrespective of what is in store for me in the future, I will never forget the "names" that I got at IITM!!