As 2020 bids a much-awaited adieu and Corona emerges as the most feared word of the year, there are two more words, rather names, that have become anathema in Uttar Pradesh.
'Vikas' and 'Anamika' are now names that are scorned, ridiculed and even hated for unrelated reasons.
'Vikas' earned its share of disdain when, on July 3, a little-known gangster, Vikas Dubey, killed eight policemen in an ambush in Bikru village in Kanpur.
Vikas Gulati, a class 9 student in a prestigious boys' school in Lucknow, said his friend now referred to him as 'Vikas Dubey' and he 'detests' it.
"Some of them have even fed my number in their phones as 'Vikas Dubey'. I shudder to think of the kind of ridicule I would have faced if the school was open," he said.