By INDIA INPUT Delhi desk (@IndiaInput)
‘I am Kovid & I am not a virus’ – It’s by now a famous line by entrepreneur Kovid Kapoor who loves and shares the jokes around his first name. Yes, what a sport !
COVID 19 pandemic hasn’t gone. It continues to give us moments of shocks, surprises, pain and sadness. But, this man is making the best use of the similarity in his first name to create moments of smile and laughter. Read and smile.
Kovid goes near ‘wild’..
‘Kovid’ is a Hindi word that means an eminent scholar (प्रकांड विद्वान्) or someone who knows the Vedas. But, it is pronounced somewhat similar to COVID, the virus that has spelt trouble and brought a gloomy pandemic over the world. However, as someone rightly said, life is a game of perceptions and attitudes. Kovid Kapoor, 30, an entrepreneur and co-founder of holidify.com, sportingly uses his name and jokes, mostly from real life incidences or imagined and witty memes built around it to put smiles back on millions of faces. Talking about his scholarly name, he had an All India JEE ranking of 76 and could ensure a seat in IIT Bombay. He remembers the incidence in his style, somewhat this way-
‘When someone in a remote village in UP saw my old photo, from a newspaper, after my IIT selection – from 2008! – at some store, and decided to tag me on Twitter.’Here are glimpses from his twitter account @kovidkapoor :
An honest mistake by the Baker
‘For my 30th bday, my friends ordered a cake – and Amintiri automatically assumed that it’s some kinda joke, and it should be spelled with a C not a K. ‘
‘The Kovid + Corona joke that no one ever seems to stop talking about. 
‘
‘At Starbucks, the guy handing me the coffee pointed out the name to everyone else and they burst out laughing – I mostly use a fake name now. 
‘
‘When Google though that I misspelled my name, in my own Gmail search.’
‘Google, there was no mistake, yes !’
A reason to lessen the pandemic stress
In one of his tweets, he wrote,-
‘A Zoomcar customer care guy called me, to process some pending refund, and told me that he had been laughing in the room with the other customer care folks before the call.’ But when the company replied on this, requesting to divulge details for a strict action, he refused and asked them ‘to chill instead of thinking to penalise the poor guy’
He has also received replies on twitter like this one :
Kovid: ‘Hi my name is Kovid’
Me: ‘Hi myself omicron. Naam toh suna hoga!’
He has been repeatedly asked, -‘Can someone touch you?’
Someone even suggested him,
‘Tell them how contagious you are!’
He replied, ‘Haha that might have been a cool pickup line, had I not been married!’
Another one chipped in : ‘Now you can say, your wife caught KOVID first, long before anyone!’
In another series of funny banter, One twitter user posted,-‘ I can imagine an announcement on an airport. This is the final call for Mr Kovid kindly board your flight before you miss it!’
Kovid replied,-‘LOL! I better not be late for flights. Also at Starbucks – I always tell them to just not announce my name when handing me my coffee.’
On Twitter, he often gets queries like, -‘Were you conceived and/or born in a wahaan, china?
Or,
are you a Chinese agent?’
One twitter user even said sorry to him. Why? Read,-‘Hahaha my mom says many times Satya Nash jaye iss Covid ka. . sorry!’
Says Kovid Kapoor, -‘Apart from these, there have been tens of funny micro-interactions, with Amazon delivery guys, with electricians, at airport security, at hotel check-ins, etc. The real thrill is before the start of a new interaction – is there gonna be another little joke, or not?’
Q. : About your activities, start-up hollidify.com
KK : ‘I graduated from IIT Bombay in 2012, and started Holidify along with a friend from college, Rohit Shroff, in 2014. Holidify has had so many ups and downs – but of course, COVID has caused the biggest impact on our business. We were a 25 people team in Feb-2020, running and growing profitably without having to raise funds, just before the virus struck. We had to cut down costs massively, but we managed to survive almost two years of the pandemic – and I’m ‘positive’ that we will survive the ‘third wave’ as well – puns intended!’
Q.: And you make fun of COVID. Nice way of getting even with the virus. Btw, how do feel when you are reminded about the name and about the similarity?
KK : ‘Haha, I am reminded of the similarity multiple times a day! I always take it with a generous dose of humour – I had a name that I had always loved, and now it means something that’s known by EVERYONE in the world – what’s not to laugh about that? In fact my friends have started to get bored of my Kovid-COVID jokes, by now.’
Q. : About sporting behaviour. Does it run in the family…
KK : ‘I would think so! I would say my father is very sporting, and generally takes things in a very positive manner.’
Q : ‘Your positive message to the ppl affected or even devastated by the pandemic’
KK : ‘It might sometimes not feel like it, but deep down, we know that it’s all going to get over!
So just hang in, and stay safe. :)’
Back to the banter
More about the interactions in his words,-‘ I’m quite used to really enunciating my name, stressing that it’s a soft D and not a hard D. And to quickly whip out my PAN card from my wallet, just to prove that it REALLY is my name. Anyway – life threw me (and all of us) a sour lemon, I just decided to take it all in good humour and make some lemonade out of it.
Thrilled at how viral the main thread got, feel like a mini celeb for a few hours.’
And never to forget what he has posted on social media, -‘Please DM me if you have any more Kovid-COVID jokes – I am running out of them in my repertoire
.’
(All pics : Kovid Kapoor)
