Vishesh. Since I was a little kid, I’ve been told the story of my name. In Tamil, an ancient language of India that exists to this day, my name means ‘special’. But the word, ‘special’, has one more Tamil character tacked on at the end so it would be pronounced visheshem. சிறப்பு means special but my name is spelled சிறப். I also found out a little belatedly that I had been pronouncing my name wrong all these years. I pronounced it with a flat e, as in ‘pet, and broke it into two syllables as in vish-esh. It was supposed to be pronounced as vi-shesh, and the e was supposed to be pronounced like the ‘a’ in ‘maze’ and the first ‘sh’ was to be just a‘s’. Confusing, I know. But besides the breakdown of my name, I used to wonder if being ‘special’ was actually good or bad.

When I was 5, I lived in Australia, and like most 5 year old's, the world made absolutely no sense whatsoever. But I remember reading this one book from the school library vividly. I no longer remember the plot only that it had to do with monkeys, but the last line of the book stays with me to this day. It said, “There was nothing wrong with being different, odd just meant special.” I remember thinking, ‘well, if being odd is just being special, and if my name means special, doesn’t that mean I’m odd and different?’ I wondered if that meant I shouldn’t try to fit in with everyone else or was different from everybody else. Being special sounded nice, but it also sounded like I was the oddball.

Later on in life, I continued to contemplate the deeper meaning and connotations of my name when I became more competitive. Whether it was sports or grades or some kind of contest, I was just plain competitive and going in I always thought about what my name meant first. I’d always say to myself, “Special, right, let’s show that today.” Of course, life isn’t always just winning, so whenever things didn’t go my way, which is to say often, I’d scorn the meaning of my name. Maybe because my name was one character of from ‘special’ I was always supposed to fall a little short of being special. So firstly my name probably meant I was supposed to stick out, now it meant I was always going to fall short? My name was not coming out to be all that, rather I wished it was different.

Just a few weeks ago, though, my outlook on my name changed pretty dramatically. I was at an international leadership conference in Halifax, Canada, and I was placed in a team of 20 against 5 other teams to come up with a solution to the problem of sustainability in cities in 1 week. We were the under dogs from the very beginning, and I was to lead my team in getting the answer. Before four others and I went up to present, a consultant from our team told me to “live up to the meaning of my name”, which he knew because he knew Tamil as well. As if by charm and against all luck my team managed to come out on top, and that brought me a new outlook on my name. Perhaps it did not been I was to stick out or always fall a little short but that perhaps there was a lot in store for me and I had great things ahead of me.