Name is more than just words ...

What do you picturize when you hear/read someone's name ? Especially if the person is not in front of you ... what I mean is when you hear a name, does that name create an image of the person in your mind ? Knowingly or unknowingly, it happens and you create that layout for yourself .. something you can associate that name with ... You know that it could be totally wrong but still you do it ... say you are reading a book and you read the name of the character, you ought to picturize him/her before reading further ... Everytime you read that name again, you can pretty much see that unknown figure you have imagined, doing all those things mentioned in the book ! thats why when a movie is made based on a book u've already read, sometimes you like it coz its exactly like you imagined but sometimes you are the standing first in the queue to criticise it !

e.g. Whenever I hear the name 'Neha', a very beautiful, cute, young, slim, delicate, ever-smiling, naive (running out of adjectives ? ;) ) girl appears in front of me (where are you Neha ? ;) ) ... Suprisingly, I have never had a friend or for that matter even an acquaintance named Neha but its just something that my mind pictures ... a face that I associate with the name Neha' ... I dont know why ! It just happens .. Remember that joke about 'Mahalakshmi' and 'Sapna' in 'Khakee' ? I think everyone does it .. 'Mahalakshmi' somehow reminds me of an angry 50 year lady .. (no offense meant to anyone pls)...

Sometimes, what you've picturized turns out to be correct & sometimes you can not stop your chuckle meeting that person in person .. laughing to yourself how different had you imagined this guy/ gal ! I am sure this must have happened to everyone out there ! right ? I think its to do with our brain .. our brain has better photographic memory and its been designed to store data in terms of images, clips, videos rather than text based description ... so whenever you try to store names in there, it attaches a 'void' image to it with an 'unconfirmed' status ! Anytime you hear more about that thing, the image is updated ... This goes one until once you meet the person, when the real face takes its place and you tend to compare the previous void image with this actual image for similarities / differences ... Now the status changes to confirmed and this new image is pulled out everytime you hear the name ! pretty neat huh !!

I always ask people I meet the first time, how had they imagined me to be when they first heard my name. The answers I get are so funny sometimes ! Once a guy had told me that he had imagined a fat guy with a big belly and spectacles with a couple of books in hand when he heard 'Aniruddha' the first time ! He was so shocked to see me !! ;) ... but girls normally imagine me as hot, handsome, cool, matured guy and they are never shocked ;) ... lol