Sheroo

I read Alec the other day and something she said made me realize that I have not yet intimated junta about one of the most amusing displays of weird human behaviour I have seen.

I hate nicknames. And find people who have a natural proclivity to nickname - hilarious at best and annoying at worst.

I have seen people get on nickname basis with complete strangers after two meetings, probably a couple of loo encounters, no more. I have seen people shorten already short names ridiculously - like say, Pilu to Pils (That is another one, why must we add an 's' to everything? Anyways is not a word, nor is chalos or byes or lols!)

So in the world of unnecessary nicknaming, Shraddha becomes Shrads and Namrita - Namu, Aditya is Adi and Natasha, Nats or Nuts.

Don't get me wrong, I am all for having cute funny names for people, which symbolize them or came into existence because of some un/fortunate incident. But it seems sometimes that people do it just to prove or impress familiarity or to sound cool!

Also nicknames are the prerogative of people who are actually close to you, logic being that they have to call your name out so many times that they have to shorten it - it would actually save time (there does not have to be a logic for everything, but I do believe there is). So it's ok if your mother calls you Namu, or your best friends or colleagues call you Adi, but if your friend's friend who just met you starts to call you that, it's time to hit him over the head!

I have had some nicknames or something like nicknames. People have called me Shrek, billi, S, Dola, DR among others. But nobody constantly keeps calling me any of that. Also, these are fun names, meant to be used in fun.

Half of my family calls me Ruchi. That is, strangely, my nick. More understandably, my mother's nick is Binny from her actual name Vineeta and everybody in the family calls her that. But I have never heard anybody from outside the family calling her Binny, that would be weird. Similarly, if somebody arbit was to call me Ruchi (am ok with really close friends doing that) or worse - Ruch, it would just piss me off.

Point is everybody should know their place in how far to go, trying to come off as friendly. It is the fake affection that people usually try to denote using such things, which is annoying.