A KAUR BY ANY OTHER NAME...

I beg to differ with you this time, Mr. Shakespeare! What’s in a name? Ask an Indian student with a name other than Christian, who has been to study abroad in the Western World (and especially in the US of A.)

(cartoon courtesy http://www.toonpool.com/)

After they’ve “so not got your name” and asked you to spell it (and still mispronounced it), commented on your colour (“like, you’ve got gold under your skin!”), remarked on your wonderfully “inneresting costume” and wondered at your remarkable mastery over the English language (“and that quaint accent”) they’ll probably want you to tell them your name again.
Your name’s the simplest thing in the world—5 letters, 2 syllables—yet you’ll have to get used to answering to all its mutilated permutations of pronunciation (Renee, Runee, Rainy…)

You don’t know it but you become invisible as soon as you enter a foreign country to work or study. Oh, it takes you a while to realize the fact because physically, you stick out like a sore thumb. Everybody makes much ado about everything you say or do (Oh, wow! Really! That’s so cool!). There are so many questions about your culture, your family, your self. You’ve never had so much attention just because of how you look and what you wear and who you are and you just enjoy it so much.

But slowly, it sinks in. Every time they are surprised, every time you answer the incessant questions, every time you’re patted on the back for understanding a local colloquialism or even just getting the punch line of a joke, you lose a bit of yourself—who you are— without quite knowing it.

Then comes the day you begin to expect the attention and to pre-empt the questions. You’ve worked out the answers the way they’d comprehend them. When they ask you your name, you don’t even bother to just say it—“Let me spell it for you. It’s Ranee as in ‘Ronnie’ and Kaur as in the apple.”

That day, they learn how to pronounce your name correctly but you become Ronnie Core. The rose is no longer a rose.

Your name—you never really think about it until you’ve lived abroad for a fair stretch of time. You’ve never thought about how it relates to you and who you are. It’s just your name. Back home, it works like that little tag you find in your clothes: “Size M, 30% polyester, 70% cotton. Machine wash warm; Tumble-dry low. Made in India.” The moment you tell someone your name it instantly transmits to them the entire surface of your identity: the etymology of the name, the region of your origin, your mother tongue(s), your religion, caste, creed and perhaps even the family you belong to and its standing in your community/society. Your name takes care of all the preliminaries of your identity. It takes care of all the introductions. The moment you’ve pronounced it, it has told everybody who you basically are.

So when your name loses its signifying power, you become invisible. You have to start groping for other ways to define yourself. Your name doesn’t define your givens: ergo, there are no givens. You now have to decide for yourself what is really given you and what you have to give to your universe. Your name does not automatically tie you down to a country a region a religion a family so you are free to decide what you want to be identified with, if anything.

Suddenly, you’re not defined at all. You’re not rooted. You’re just you, whoever you are. Step One: you panic. You cling to your Indian-ness—whatever that means—and overdo it. You rent Hindi movies every weekend. You listen only to Indian music in your car. You have your surrogate “Indian” families you “potluck” with regularly. You wear your interesting costumes more than you ever did back home. In short, you aren’t really being “yourself” at all. You’re just conforming violently to the “western” notion of being “exotic” and “eastern.”

Some people get stuck there and there they stay. Others take the opportunity of looking beyond names (or “tags”) and into people. They surrender themselves to the glorious confusion about who they are and begin the process of “becoming” somebody they really want to be. They become a mass of kaleidoscopic, shifting identities rather than one with a fixed center, focus and pattern. They learn to appreciate each little fragmented brilliantly coloured piece of all those diverse things that make them who they are. They keep collecting more identities from all over the globe. The individual shards of their multiplying identities are quite separate and distinct. They never leak or melt. They never merge and make a new composite. Sometimes they even clash with each other. But the possibilities of their “becoming” are so infinitely rich and endless!

So now you can potentially be Ranee and Renee and Runee and Ronnie and Rainy and every other permutation. You can be at home everywhere, but you become effectively homeless because you see, your home isn’t really home anymore because it excludes all those other homes you’ve known. It becomes harder for you to separate “us” from “them.” You can no longer validate those boundaries of religion or colour—your world cannot be black or white.

All that can happen at the sound of your name on foreign tongues. A rose by another name is no longer a rose. It is another flower in the becoming.

Oh and Mr. Shakespeare, about the second half of that line? Nix that too, would you? What smells “sweet” to you may seem like an olfactory attack to another nose. Let me tell you about the time I cooked my first Indian dinner in a small apartment I shared with American roommates…