Registered with the Registrar of Newspapers for India under R.N.I 53640/91

Vol. XXVIII No. 1, April 16-30, 2018

What’s in a name..?

Readers correspond

Recently I wrote an article on the Madras Tramways under the title Remembering Metro’s Ancestor (MM, February 16th, 2018). It elicited some response and led to a discussion on how names got distorted. Read attached and my reply.

N.S. Parthasarathy

“What With All The Jokes And Taunts, I Used To Envy People With Simple, Common Names, And Then There Were Those Very English Names Which No One Made Fun Of. I Often Wondered Why I Should Not Change Mine.”

By the time I was old enough to recognise my maternal grandfather, he was past 70. My earliest memory is of him reclining in a huge easy chair in a corner of a large hall, lost in thought, his fingers restlessly moving the beads of an imaginary rudrakshamala. He always seemed to wear a stern look. He spoke little. No one dared disturb his endless contemplation, except my grandmother and, of course, the newly-arrived grandson.

The first time I realised that I had an unusual name was when I was in the school first year. My class teacher took five minutes to understand my name and spell it correctly, by which time I was in tears.

It was my grandmother, a disciplinarian with a mischievous smile, or perhaps my mother, who first told me that I had been named after my grandfather. I seemed to have inherited some of his looks and mannerisms. There were jokes aplenty those days about my name. The most common was to call me after a popular South Indian sweet made out of rava! The other favourite pastime of my tormentors when I told them my name was to pretend that I suffered from some speech defect and perhaps what I really meant was Balakrishnan (my father’s name) or may be Balakesan or even Balakesi. I had to steadfastly correct them.

As I grew older, I could not understand all the fuss and giggles about my name. After all, it meant a young lion. Granted, I, with my timid nature and short stature, hardly bore any resemblance to the Lord of the Jungle. Yes, it was an uncommon name, but definitely not funny – no more funny than a Venugopalan, a Padmanabhan, a Thamarakshan, or a Sathyamurthy. What with all the jokes and taunts, I used to envy people with simple, common names such as Raman, Krishnan and even Anantharamkrishnan. And then there were those very English names such as Butler, Barber and Winterbottom. No one made fun of those names; I often wondered why I should not change mine.

I found that my name caused some unexpected, though not unwelcome, confusion. Once, as a young student of engineering, I found my train reservation in the company of a couple of young women from Kerala. The Railways, my eventual employer, thought that any name which ends with an ‘i’ should belong to a female. Thirty years later, when a Balakeshwari was posted to a large workshop as Chief Mechanical Engineer, a few people at the receiving end were surprised when they saw a middle aged man arriving, instead of a woman.

Service in the Railways took me to almost all parts of the country. It was fascinating how my name changed wherever I went. In Bengal, it was Bal Kishori. In the Hindi belt, it was usually clipped to Balkesri. In the west it sometimes became Balkesani. And in God’s own country it rolled out smoothly as Balaesari. No one could place me from my name. At various times, I have been mistaken for a UPwalah, a Kannadiga, a Maharastrian and even a Bihari. During his lifetime, grandfather had, perhaps unwittingly, breached the language barrier. Starting with Andhra Pradesh, he had chosen to live and set up business in Madras, forged a link with Thrissur through my grandmother and also built a home in Bangalore. In the household, he was at once “Thathaiyya”, “Thatha” or “Sami Achan”. For a child growing up at the dawn of Independence, there could have been no better object lesson than this, in the essential oneness of the country.

As the years wore on, I found a strange affinity for my name. After all, there must be tens of thousands of Ramans and Krishnans in this world, but only me with mine. (Recently, I found one more in the phone directory!). And it took me almost half-a-century of living to realise that what grandfather had bequeathed were not only economic security and a carefree childhood that he himself never had, but also a broadness of outlook and a name that seemed to belong to everywhere in this country.

But, if I thought I had seen all possible distortions of my name, I was in for a surprise. Recently, after diligently noting down the order, my name and address over the telephone, the newly-opened provision store sent the bill in the name of Kaalakesari (written neatly in Tamil) perhaps uncannily forecasting my ultimate destiny.

It no longer matters; I shall carry my name till the end, proudly.

K. Balakesari

Respected Balakesari, Sir

I read the article on your struggle with the task of making people call you by your right and rightful name. My sympathy for your predicament and admiration for your endurance and sense of humour. I took extra care to double-check how I spelt your name as you have had enough and would not take any more of it.

I am convinced, especially after reading your article, that there must be some convention or even legal requirement that namakaranam should be done in consultation with the eventual bearer of the consequences of that exercise.

Sir, your name surely deserved better treatment. No mean name, that. Young Lion!  Evokes images of my old  cricket hero, Jaisimha, Victorious Lion, hitting the straight field six and of the ever-roaring MGM lion! Believe me, Sir, I really wish I had your name – perhaps that gives you some consolation. I have had to live all my 86 years with a tongue twister – Parthasarathy, with the same vowel repeated with alternating elongations. It became Partha Shastri in Delhi where I worked for a couple of years. Partho to Bengali friends which was not so bad, being so endearing.

I worked for an English company called Parry’s for several years. It was my English colleagues who had a lot trouble over it – over my name, I mean, not my work, the latter was exemplary. They struggled with Parasarathy, appeasing the wearisome vowel with a liberal sprinkling of it. They could not, for long, handle such a heavy concentration of vowels. Seeing their suffering I was in a state of Stockholm Syndrome – empathising with my tormentors. Eventually, they discovered what they thought would make me happy hearing my name properly pronounced. They said Port Authority sounded almost like Parthasarathy. Even if they were well-intentioned, this was a bit too much. Observing my sudden coldness, they asked if Pat would settle the issue once for all. It sounded good to be one among them as Pat was like Bob, Mike or Jeff. This was the outcome of the same genius that turned K. Chenthamarai (meaning red lotus) into K.C. Murray. The research into my name did not end there. It became a game. It was found that my long association with the Company was pre-destined and even embedded in my very name. It was proved to me that the letters in my name when rearranged read as Parry’s Thatha! Check this out when you have some time.

The moral, Sir, is to see the brighter side of things, as we are told. For my part, I felt comforted to think that I was not named Subramanian to become Submarine or even worse – what I thought I heard the Australian commentator refer to our great cricketer, Venkatraghavan, as Rent-a-Caravan!

Who said, what’s in a name? There is plenty in it.

Pacha

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