This is where I incorporate one of those extremely decisive things in my life, which over the years has angered me to such extremities, which cannot be described in words.
When I was born, my mother wanted to name me Nandita. Extremely nice name, you cannot make any funny art-form out of it, you can hardly get the spelling wrong and you don’t have to repeat it twice to an unknown person. But destiny had something else to offer me. My father wanted my name to begin with the letter M, since my mother’s name began with the similar letter. Don’t ask me why, I never found out the mystery behind such a choice. Anyway, so here’s the deal. Maitrayee decided as the propah name and nickname (which is a must if you belong to a Bengali family) is Neena.
This next paragraph is a very important one. It explains the story behind my name. So, doze off or skip the paragraph…
The story is from one of the Upanishads, which one, my mom doesn’t remember. There was this Sage called Jagyaval. He had two wives – the older one was Katyani and the younger one was Maitrayee. Katyani was more into house-hold work and Maitrayee was into Adhayan (studying various subjects and assisting her husband. One day, Jagyaval realizes he has to perform the Vanyaprastha stage, and so he needs to denounce his material life and go to the forest to attain enlightenment. So, he calls his wives and expresses his desire to divide his resources between them. Herein, Maitrayee says a Sanskrit line which when translated in English means, “What will I do with those material resources, that will not make me Immortal?” She accompanies her husband in his search of enlightenment. And apparently, this particular line had influenced my mother so much, that she had finally come to the lone conclusion that there can be no better name than Maitrayee, for her daughter.
(Obviously, that is another thing to discuss, that my father considered that my name should have been Katyani, because of my love for materialistic things right from childhood. Crying for a balloon in gariahat when I was 3 years old, to asking for a sleek mobile phone , when I am 21…life hasn’t changed much.)
My mother’s responsibility ended there. But that’s where the nightmare started for me. Right from school, people have developed art-forms which exhibit stupendous nature of innovation. The common one is Maitree, this means friendship, and as I have so painstakingly described the story in the earlier paragraph, that is not my name. Weird ones include Moitro or something. Sometimes they confuse it with Maitreya, which is male name. And when I tell my name to a stranger, the usual responses I get is What – Come again – Excuse me – Pardon me – Once more – huh – please repeat – can you spell it for me..the list is endless
Sample this conversation I had in the Election Commission office, when I went for my voter identity card.
Man: Please write your name in English and Bengali on top of the form.After completing the form, I go to this person Man: Your name is Mai-tra-eee Me: No, its Moi-tre-eee Man: Ya, but the Bengali spelling does not match with the English spelling
Me: I pronounce it Moi-tre-ee, but I write Maitrayee. Whats the problem?
Man: But theres ambiguity, pronounciation does not match with the spelling…
Me: In my birth certificate, its spelt Maitrayee, so I guess it should be ok Man: Maitrayee and Moitreyee is different. You should probably stick to Moitreyee
Me: Well, nothing much can be done now. My birth certificate contains Maitrayee. Now, I am not being paranoid and please, you cannot say that I suffer from obsessive compulsive disorder. But is it a heinous crime to expect that people atleast pronounce your name properly? No, it seems that it is too much to ask. I understand that you have to put a little bit of effort on your tongue, but why can’t people think about the person sitting at the other end of the table? I am always going through an identity crisis, and I become really very tired reminding people a zillion number of times what is the correct pronunciation and the proper spelling. But no, they never seem to follow what I say, or they consciously ignore and continue with their innovation.
So, the never ending process of name-messing continues… and so does my fruitless methods of enlightening the oblivious mortals.






Recent Comments