Why favour one religion, movies, and ignore the other, cricket?

As Indians like to name their children after their idols — religious, sporting or cinematic — the gambit by Virgin Atlantic to offer discounts to passengers sharing their names with “filmi” characters appears a tad reckless. Not because members of the Gandhi family may apply for discounts as their appellations figure in the airline’s shortlist of 12 “lucky” names of movie characters, but because monikers in mainline cinema tend to reflect popular choice and, hence, are pretty common. In the era of real-life Vijays and Vickys, reel-life characters tended to be christened thus. Therefore, including current favourites like Rohit, Karan, Arjun and Tina in the list may attract rather too many applicants for that 5% and 10% rebate.

However, since it is part of the airline’s “feel like a star” campaign and is a tribute to Indian cinema, it could have come up with a more cinematically diverse list. While Rajinikanth fans may be mollified because the south Indian superstar can lay as much claim to the “Vijay” in the airline list as his Mumbai peer Amitabh Bachchan — and even Bengali icon Prasenjit has played “Bijoy” on occasion — the list seems skewed towards Bollywood. Perhaps it should consider discounts for those who share names with the dozen who command a truly pan-Indian following: the cricket team.