Growing up, Deedi Damodaran was fed up of her peculiar name.
But years later, the popular screenwriter from Kerala took to Facebook to thank her father for the name he had given her.
Her father T Damodaran's love for football and the Brazil team saw him naming his eldest daughter after Didi, a Brazilian footballer who took part in the World Cup in 1954, 1958 and 1962. (Waldyr Pereira (8 October 1928 – 12 May 2001), nicknamed Didi was a Brazilian footballer who played as a midfielder or as a forward).
Damodaran (who passed away in 2012), also known as Damodaran Master was a big name in the Malayalam film industry and had scripted some of the evergreen hits of Malayalam cinema. He had also made many movies with directors IV Sasi and Priyadarshan, movies that redefined Malayalam cinema in many ways.
Damodaran's love for the Brazilian team also led to him naming his two younger daughters by the name Vava and Garrincha, two Brazilian players from yesteryear.
(Edvaldo Jizídio Neto, commonly known as Vava, was widely considered one of the best strikers of his generation. Manuel Francisco dos Santos (28 October 1933 – 20 January 1983), was known by the nickname Garrincha.
In a Facebook post on Sunday, which was observed as Father's Day across the world, Deedi shared the story of how her father had named all his three daughters after football players.
"For me, the World Cup signifies my father. I have only watched the football games in Kozhikode, in which my father was the referee. I grew up knowing about other games through the commentary on his Akashvani radio. The names of his three children is the result of our father's immense love for football. Brazilian players Didi, Garrincha and Vava were his favorite players. His love for those players began way before we were even born, and so I became Didi and my younger sister was named Vava. My father wanted to name my youngest sister Garrincha. But by then, the majority of us in the family had decided that we will not have one more child named after a Brazilian player. I was by then fed up with my peculiar name," Deedi wrote in Malayalam.
However, it seems iike Deedi's dad had his way and the third child was nicknamed Garrincha.
"My father marked me with the name Didi. Today, when Brazil team is playing, I am sure he would be watching the game, sitting somewhere in the gallery in Russia. He is there in the team's every move," Deedi wrote.