What’s in a name?

RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet", quipped none other than the great Bard, Shakespeare.

We have names for everything – animate and inanimate, but do they matter? Starting with my own, lovingly bequeathed by my Ajji (grandmother) who upon her quest of completing religious pilgrimages, one being to Tirupati to pay homage to Goddess Padmavati. Preceding that was a trip to Rameshwar that named my brother Ramesh and continued to my younger brother Badri, after a visit to the holy shrine of Badrinath. My sister, possibly because my Ajji’s appetite for pilgrimages had been fully satiated, had nicknames in lieu of a name until, my father claims, was warranted for registration to admit her into kindergarten. Sighting a freshly minted new magazine, my parents lovingly bestowed her name, Sudha.

Names as such, seemed entirely inconspicuous until I started noticing that I shared my namesake not with kids my own age, but their mothers and aunts, sometimes even grandmothers. So did my siblings. It didn’t take long to dawn on me that my name lagged those of my contemporaries by a couple of decades. In fact, several years later, my life partner's confession disclosed his strong doubts about even going on a blind date with a girl that shared the name of his old aunt, presenting a picture of an old fashioned girl, braids twirled with flowers hanging by her ears, proficient in Carnatic music and shy. None appealed to him for a future wife until we met in real. Names follow you, like shadows.

As a pre-teen, my best childhood friend Sandhya and I were in an English medium school where nothing but English was to be spoken once we were inside the school campus. As if that were not enough, we were avid readers of Enid Blyton, and imagined ourselves in Malory Towers and deemed that our names were not quite “English” enough. Eschewing our given names and renaming ourselves as Paddy and Sandy, we peacocked for quite some time speaking in the best British accent two local Bengaluru kids ever could. This was not to persevere as we grew up and eventually bowed to the more flamboyant Bollywood influence renaming ourselves, Bindu and Sindhu. Names, seemingly, ruled us.

As a teenager, my fascination with names, I have to confess – has carried vehement likes and dislikes. My father would often in jest, dare me of the possibility of inheriting an undesirable last name, through legitimate matrimony. While growing up, I prayed that this would not turn true. Fortune by my side, evidently I never ran into such a man, thus averting a possible disastrous marital life.

What’s in a name? Indeed.