Soul4Real recently bared her soul and shared the story of how she came to adopt “soul4real” as her digital persona. Much like her, “mapetite” and variations thereof, has been my digital moniker since the time I established a digital identity.
If memory serves me right, someone else came up with it, a French tourist no less 
. While in college, I learnt French as my second language, and one day, while my classmates and I were rehearsing some French songs to perform at a reception, we were “discovered” by an elderly gentleman, a tourist from France, visiting Chennai at the time. He had heard us singing and followed the voices to where we were. Of course he took pictures galore, and sent us all copies, all the way from France, and in the accompanying letter, he referred to me as “ma petite Vidya”. And the moniker stuck .
Now, the comical sidebar to this anecdote is that I tried to perform a high kick during dress rehearsal – we were all attired in natty blue pencil skirts with crisp white shirts and red bows for the colours of the French flag – and I fell right on my derriere; we decided not to include it as part of the performance .
Ah, “ma petite Vidya.” That’s a great story. It also helps me to pronounce it knowing what it means. Although I’m sure my English pronunciation won’t do it justice. Thanks for sharing. It is so fun learning little tidbits about people on Twitter we would never “really” know other wise.
Thanks for the explanation, Vidya. I’ve been mispronouncing your moniker in my mind
MAP-a-tight, despite having been (ahem) president of my high school french club! And I hadn’t yet associated it with you – so now I’m ALL good!
Okay now that makes perfect sense. I’ve been mispronouncing it as well and wondered what it meant. Know I know….