The Devi I tried to drop

I have always been averse to my middle name. ‘Devi’ on a standalone basis was fine—even exotic, I thought—invoking divinity, but tagged on to my first name, it sounded a trifle trite. Those were the days of middle names, whereas today, in the age of the tweet and the sound bite, the shorter the name, the better.

There were girls in school with long names like Bhagirathi Lakshminarayanan and Madhavi Malati Bandopadhyay, and our nuns in school, hailing from New Zealand to Ireland, never seemed to go beyond ‘Bhagi’ and brought down the latter to ‘Maddie’. My ‘Devi’ too was ignored till I forgot it myself, except when it was time for filling in forms for my school-leaving examination. I dutifully wrote it down and promptly forgot about it again.

My two sisters were also Devis, but they cleverly managed to dispense with them while filling out their forms. So they have remained plain Uma and Radha. I was foolish enough to retain the Devi and have been the butt of many jokes, good and ill-humoured. “With Devi around, why do we need to bother?” or “There goes forth Devi ji. Quick, where are the flowers and the incense?”

When I joined a large public sector organisation, my name and specimen signature needed to be circulated across the organisation. I saw this as a heaven-sent opportunity to ditch the Devi once and for all. But my spouse, who was more conservative and overly superstitious, prevented me: “This is the name gifted to you by your parents, and your certificates carry it; it would be inauspicious to leave it out.”

Imagining dreadful fallouts in a new-found career, I meekly complied. Thus, I am still burdened with my middle name, but it goes to my credit that I had the sense to scrap it from my signature, which does not even carry the ‘D’ of Devi in it. However, my letters of accolades and promotions proudly included Devi. I don’t know where they are today except in my dwindling memory. 

When one of my friends, having read an article of mine in a national daily, asked me, ”Since when have you transformed yourself into a Devi?” I replied blandly, ”I was always one.”

”Why didn’t we get to know of it?”

“What would you have done?” I queried. His reply was, ”Why, we would have placed you in a mandap, strewn flowers around you and worshipped you with heartfelt devotion.”

At least, I thought I had escaped that fate. Thank the Lord for slender mercies! 

I take comfort in the bard’s words, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet.” 

(Disclaimer: The views expressed above are the author's own. They do not necessarily reflect the views of DH.)