What's in a name?

Our name is as much a point at which we embark on developing our identity, as it is a map to eventually find the way back to ourself.

I so hated my name growing up. It was too short. It ended as soon as it started. And despite having just two syllables in it, no one seemed to say it right.

What bugged me more though, was that my parents didn’t choose my name. As was customary in some Marathi communities, one of my atyas (paternal aunts) had named me Sai.

Apparently, it was an atya’s special honour - as the father’s sister - to name the newborn. The patriarchy starts stalking you the minute you are born.

My only other Raje female cousin, who was 10 years my senior, was called Jui. And so Jui tai’s little sister would be called Sai, atya thought.

“How could you let someone else name your one and only child?!” I angrily demanded of my parents as a girl of seven or eight.

They would just smile.

“How does it matter who named you? You are ours anyway,” Baba would reason.

But I hated Sai with all my heart. Other girls in school had beautiful, long names that seemed to have a rhythm and melody about them. The Radhikas, Purvas and Gauris of the world seemed to have it so much better.

Sai, on the other hand, was just cause for confusion. There was no other Sai in school. Sai was rare and unique.

Sai stood out when all Sai wanted to do was to fit in.

I would dread starting a new school year because that would bring the inevitable roll call on the first day back to school. New class teachers always mispronounced my name, and they would almost always look to the boys’ side of the classroom when they called it. And I would have to wildly wave my arm to get the teacher’s attention while the entire class stared at me.

At some early point in my school years, my parents thought changing how my name was spelled - from ‘Sai’ to ‘Saie’ would somehow correct the mispronunciations at the very least. It did no such thing. So we went back to Sai.

One week night, as soon as we all got home, I went up to Baba. I must have been eight.

“I want to change my name. I don’t want to be Sai,” I announced.

Baba looked pensive. He pulled up a chair at the dining table, and gestured me to sit down too.

This is good, I thought. A serious, dining table discussion is what this needs.

“So what do you want to be called instead?”

“Vrushali,” I suggest.

“Vrushali?”

“Vrushali.”

“Okay then, Vrushali Devi Raje,” says Baba as he breaks into a smile.

“Nooo, just Vrushali!” But I am smiling too. The name sounds grandly frivolous. I go to bed happy.

I soon forget the conversation as well as the urge to rename myself, although Baba occasionally addresses me as Vrushali Devi Raje in a contrived, formal voice. Like I am some princess at court.

I realise Vrushali Devi Raje feels like donning a borrowed costume, while Sai is like second skin.

And so Sai starts to grow on me and I onto her.

The only other Sai I know of then is Sai Paranjpye, who is one of my favourite filmmakers. I never tire of watching and re-watching her films, particularly ‘Sparsh’ and ‘Chashme Buddoor’. I especially enjoy the opening credits of ‘Chashme Buddoor’ that feature a fun stopmotion of a woman’s hands pushing aside a man’s hands and taking his place to frame a film scene as the words ‘Story, ScreenPlay, Dialogues and Direction by Sai Paranjpye’ flash on the screen.

Did Sai Paranjpye think that sequence up, I wonder. That’s a good Sai to look up to, I think.

Curiosity gets the better of me and I want to know what my name means. The name is so rare in the 80s and 90s that I haven’t even thought to ask someone about it.

It’s a poetic Marathi term for a dear friend, companion and confidante of the female gender, some of my family tell me.

“Aga chhan naav aahe - It’s a wonderful name,” Aaji, my paternal grandmother, reasons.

“It was also the name of Shivaji Maharaj’s [a Maratha king] wife. Sai Bai was a wise woman,” Aaji says.

Sai Bai the wise. I like the sound of that. Sai gradually becomes me and I become Sai. Nothing and no one can change who I am, no matter what they call me. I am unmistakably me.

The range of names I get called by friends in school and college, from ‘Saai’ (‘Are your parents devotees of Sai Baba?’) and ‘Sigh’ (cream in Marathi) , to ‘Sahi mein dahi’ (untranslatable!) are water off a duck’s back.

In New Zealand, where I currently live, my name gets most people’s tongues tangled. They put an earnest effort into getting it right, and I enjoy showing them how. Their ‘Suh-iii!’ has a tone of surprise. Their ‘Suh-iii!’ is in a tearing hurry.

One of my colleagues, who could only bring himself to call me ‘say’ (like ‘day’) despite trying, now breaks into singing ‘Say my name, say my name!’ by Destiny’s Child every time he approaches my desk. I am amused how most work interactions where I introduce myself now have soft chants of my name erupting around the room. ‘Sai’, ‘Sai, ‘Sai’, Sai’, they all practise dutifully as I grin and encourage them along.

For a moment, I feel like a freakish cult leader whose time has come.

I don’t care if they get it right, but I love that they try.

I love that I don’t fit into a mould.

What’s in a name, really?