LIKE WATER FOR LIFE

With lots of time to myself as I lay in hospital, I began to think of a new name for myself. What did I want to be like? What was my true nature?

In a writing group I am part of, the week’s prompt we received from one of the participants was to write by water. Sit near a water body and write the words that flow forth from you. If there is no water body, be creative. Maybe dip your feet in bucket water and write.

It was the last week of December. “It is so cold in Delhi, Parool, that I ration the washing of my hands also,” I wrote back to her. “Leave alone dip my feet in a bucket of water. Or immerse in any water body.”

The image of being by a water body and dipping one’s toes tentatively in it brought back a memory that had been embedded deep for many decades.

I was 12 years old and there was a conversation in the family about changing my name. I had been doing somewhat badly by conventional standards and had landed in hospital with serious injuries. It was a time of deep shock for the entire family. Unexpectedly, it gave my mother and I a fair amount of time with each other. She spent days and nights besides me as I recovered from the surgeries and injuries in my hospital bed. We chatted a lot. Some intimate stuff.  A few rash promises to be obedient towards each other from now on.

Friends and relatives got me presents and tried to stay cheerful and loving when they came to meet my family and me. Some came straight to the hospital from the airport or the railway station. I was rich! Comics, bangles, hair clips, chocolate; our people looked out for me.

Outside the hospital room, the atmosphere was grim. An uncle and my grandfather rummaged through my books and diaries to find clues about my inner life. Dadaji told me about this many years later. I didn’t think about it then, but now I wonder how Papa went back home after every evening in the hospital and sleep without my mother and me in the house. Did he get irritable when he sent off my brothers to school in the morning? What did he put in their tiffin boxes?

My parents were young and lost. The 12-year-old me thought they were old and unreasonable but they were still in their late thirties. In the 1980s, they were adulting in a world that was very different from the one they had grown up in. They relied on the opinions of others, and sought solace and reassurance in the curious realm of the overlap between superstition and religion.

Someone advised them to consult a pandit and get my janam patri and my horoscope re-examined. They had done this once before when I had been a sickly child. I had been advised to wear a garnet locket and feed bajra to pigeons- both of which made me feel special and participate enthusiastically.

This time, the consultant pandit suggested that I had been named wrongly and that was causing my fate to go awry. A Hindu child must be named in consultation of the stars, planets and the friendly neighbourhood Brahmin. Apparently, the alignment of real and imaginary celestial bodies at the time of my birth suggested that my name should start with the sound S. And end with A. The sound N was the source of my bad run with karma. I was Neeru at home and Natasha in the world outside.

I had lots of time in hospital bed and my mother was non-committal about thinking of a new name for me. This was pretty much in keeping with her personality. She had learnt to not invest much in anything that too many others would try to control anyway.

Sarita, Sarika, Soumya, Sonia… I couldn’t come up with any other options. My mother was already Sudha. Sarika was a beautiful actress. Sarita…hmmm. I imagined a brook bubbling down a mountainside.

That was nice. I saw myself as water falling down, flowing over moss and rocks, transparent and playful, reflecting the sharp sun. If I was going to have a new name, it would be Sarita. Fresh every day. Sometimes serene, always nourishing.

Logistics around forms, applications and government offices is every the urban parents’ nightmare, specially a couple who already have one out of their three children admitted in a hospital and later tethered to the physiotherapy department for 6 months. It was complicated enough to negotiate attendance, waivers and exams with my school. I had no idea how awkward and embarrassing it must have been for my parents to narrate my story and edit it for form and narrative depending on who they were speaking to. Changing my name everywhere would be an additional layer of expecting concessions from the rest of the world. After their initial fears subsided, they didn’t really have a conviction in the traditional things they seemed to believe in overtly.

So I remained Natasha. I got to keep Neeru. We forgot about a new name as other urgent details preoccupied us. Though I did become a brook. A bubbly, self-inventing, rejuvenating, child-like, cheerful body of water. Never still, always saying something for passers-by to tune into. The nature of water became me.

(This was first published in The Tribune)