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This is my fourth time at #AtoZChallenge and my theme this year is Sparky, my 11-year-old Dalmatian. You can read all about my theme here.

I am not going in any chronological order here, just penning down my memories as they come to mind. Today we are writing posts that begin with the letter N, my post is titled,Name. There is an interesting story associated with my name, Sulekha. I was born in the early sixties into a Punjabi household and have an elder sister named Poonam, so naturally I was to be Pawan.

But God had other plans for me. I had a best friend, Sulekha, she was a maharashtrian, so when I went to kindergarten school for my admission,the principal asked my name and I told her, ‘My name is Sulekha.’ My dad was away at sea and my mother had stayed home to look after my infant brother, my dad’s friend had accompanied me and he just knew me as Lucky. This is how my profession chose me, Sulekha means, someone who has a good handwriting, close enough, I have a lousy handwriting, but I write.

After we had brought Sparky home around Christmas in 2003, she was a gift for our family, we started discussing names for her. My daughter, Shloka, was keen on naming her pet Sparky and she convinced her younger brother, Kartik, to agree too. I was thinking more on the lines of Snowy, Spotty…thinking inside the box 🙂

Kartik had wanted to bring home the puppy with a black patch on her left ear and eye, he had named her Lefty. We bid goodbye to Lefty when someone came to pick her up from Sukhi’s house, to take Lefty to live in his house with a huge garden? Kartik was a little sad at seeing her go but Sparky managed to melt his heart and he was back to his sweet smiling self in no time.

There were a male puppy in the litter, his new family named him Hermes but due to some unavoidable reason he was brought back to Sukhi’s house and left there. Sukhi’s daughters, Trisha and Sonu, wanted to change His name to Lucy. I pointed out that it was a feminine name and sounded a lot like my childhood name, Lucky, so Trisha and Sonu agreed to call him Luka. Bless the lovely girls, they take after their gem of a mother.

Sparky has been a shining light in our lives and her loving and joyful spirit has brightened our home and hearts.

By Sulekha Rawat

Check out some other Bloggers participating in the challenge: AtoZ List 2015

And the Blog-A-Rhythm AtoZ posts featuring many prolific bloggers