All over the world, parents devote enormous time and effort to choosing just the right names for their children. Sometimes they don't quite get it right. Allegedly, a Mr. and Mrs. Kart were so impressed by the star of the film Citizen Kane that they named their son Orson. And please don't get me started on the absurd names celebrities give to their privileged but unfortunate offspring. I dread to think what happened to Sage Moonblood Stallone and Diva Thin Muffin Pigeen Zappa when the playground bullies got wind of their names.
And then, of course, there is Gerry Shedd. Maybe I should change the subject.
On a more serious note, however, in the Indian state of Maharashtra, many girls are called Nakusha. A pretty enough name, you may think, until you realise that, in the Marathi language, Nakusha means "unwanted".
This is just one manifestation of the problem of gender discrimination in India. Many parents prefer a male child as a future wage earner.Female foeticide is common in India. The gender imbalance has grown every decade for the last 60 years. So you could argue that the girls called Unwanted are lucky in that at least they weren't aborted.
Fortunately, there are moves to change the situation. Recently in Satara, an area noted as having one of the country's lowest female populations, 285 girls named Nakusha took part in a mass renaming ceremony attended by many wanting to combat gender discrimination. Let us hope that their new names give them renewed hope and that at least some of the parents who inflicted such a name have had cause to regret their cruel thoughtlessness.
