Ravishankar’s first name

Let us get this right. The head of Art of Living is Sri Sri Ravishankar. When I hear that name uttered I am reminded of vinyl records with a scratch.

If I am wrong and if you are big on Sri Sri’s biography, please correct my adventurous speculation – his parents did not name him Sri Sri Ravishankar. The two-word single prefix grew on him over time. You thumb your nose at me and say I can’t count. “Sri Sri” is unhyphenated and there are two separate words, Sri and Sri; one to the right is the prefix and the other is a pre-prefix.

Well, that reminded me of a terrific sitcom, Newhart, where the eldest of three brothers introduces his siblings, every time, as “this is my brother Darryl, and this is my other brother Darryl”! But, I know of no brother of Ravishankar named Sri!

I digress.

Getting back to the serious point (as though I have one), his devotees thought that mere “Sri” Ravishankar is beyond run-of-the-mill and the guru should be honoured uniquely. This is when they came up with “Sri Sri”. What I heard from the grapevine is that they desisted from adding another “Sri” for the simple reason number three is highly repetitive in our culture. Two, not so. So, it is going to be “Sri Sri Ravishankar”. A two-word, unhyphenated yet a single honorific “Sri Sri”.

Now, that honorific is losing its special status. Do we read headlines referring to Vallabhbhai Patel merely as “Sardar”; Vinayak Damodar Savarkar merely as “Veer”; Jawaharlal Nehru as merely “Pandit”? No. Their names are not fused with the titles they hold or that have been conferred upon them.

But, Sri Sri Ravishankar was referred to as “Sri Sri”, the honorific(s) standing alone, in the newspaper The Hindu, two days in a row. On March 11, the front page lead article was headlined, “Sri Sri gets time till ...” and on March 12, it went, “”At Sri Sri event ...”. To me it read like “Hillary won South Carolina democratic primary”, referring to the former first lady Hillary Clinton; or “GOP leadership targets Donald”, referring to Donald Trump.

Yes, I am claiming that “Sri Sri” has stopped being an honorific and is now to be taken as Ravishankar’s first name.  This is the demotion Ravishankar has to live down. I pity him. For him to get back to the upper tier, he has to add another “Sri Sri” to the already present two. If he did that, The Hindu may run out of space for the headline and call him simply AOL Head!

Oops, that must hurt.

Raghuram