Ever since I moved to Maharashtra 15 years ago, I have lived with a sense of inadequacy. Imagine a school where running shoes have been made compulsory and you are the only student without it. Only here the school is the state of Maharashtra and the running shoes I won’t ever own — a surname.
It all began in Class 10, when I had to fill up a form for my SSC exam. My class teacher, also my Hindi teacher, saw my form, nodded her head disapprovingly and in true Agneepath style asked me for my “baap ka naam”? Okay, she didn’t exactly phrase it like that. But she did say “Pitaji ka naam kyun nahi likha hai? Koi problem hai kya?” Offended at her implication, I pointed to “Moorthy”, which I had dutifully filled out in the surname column and said: It’s right there. Moorthy is my father’s name.
“Then what is your surname?” she asked me. That was the first time I was asked that one infamous question that has continued to plague me at every important juncture. I fumbled, looked around red-faced at the class, who all seemed amused at this rather curious problem. “That’s all I have,” I said. Where I came from, having just two components to your name was not considered sacrilege. “This won’t do. I can’t leave it blank. You have to fill all three columns,” she said, evidently annoyed with my failure to produce a surname. “Baad me bahut problem hoga,” she warned me ominously, as though I was intentionally withholding my surname. I convinced her I wasn’t and she proceeded to have a brainwave and pull out my mother’s name and place it in one of the three columns.
Result: My name in my SSC marksheet was Megha Moorthy Prabha. Evident-ly, the Tam-Brahms suddenly turned matriarchal.
Rather scarred by the unfortunate series of events in school that day, I remember going home and asking my mother why it was so complicated. “Why can’t Tam-Brahms just be like others and have a surname?” I asked, “Can’t I just add an ‘Iyer’ after my name? That will solve all problems.” It would have. But my mom maintained that “we” were not the aberration and it was “they” who had made impractical rules. She proceeded to reason out with me the legal hassles of getting one’s name changed. She also gave me a long and boring sermon on how we should not wear our caste on our sleeve and ruled out the possibility of letting me make any amendments to my name. “But I am already wearing my caste on my sleeve,” I argued. “Everyone clearly knows I am Tam-Brahm because I am the only one without a surname. Principles be damned, I just want three names.” The argument was firmly rejected and I continued my pitiful existence with a two-part name in a state where everyone had three.
As my prophetic Hindi teacher had predicted, my troubles with my name (or the lack of it) never ended. I have no two documents where my name is identical. In the last few years, I have had near-violent arguments with policemen, passport agents, college authorities, banks and insurance companies about how my name must be written. They have in turn told me, time and again, that in Maharashtra, it is essential to have a father’s name AND a surname. “You cannot do fashion and choose one, madam,” a passport officer once told me, through mouthfuls of paan. When I tried explaining to him that I was not exactly “doing” fashion, he looked at me straight in the eye and said, “Then your parents must have. You south Indians study too much and do all this funny business and cause confusion to us.”
Result: The name on my passport was Moorthy Megha X.
My personal favourite, however, is the genius Marathi manoos (presumably) who has so affectionately created my voter ID card. Though, I have never met this gentleman personally, I will always be eternally grateful to him. Evidently moved by my traumatic childhood experiences, he proceeded to do the one thing that even my parents and husband could not do for me. He gave me a surname — a Marathi one, no less. I’d like to believe it was his own.
Result: The name on my voter ID card is Ghate Megha Moorthy.
With that one stroke, the feeling of inadequacy was gone — I suddenly belonged. I had my own running shoes!
I am, however, certain that an oblivious Mr Ghate will be sitting somewhere in his little corner in the election commission office and playing good Samaritan to thousands of less-fortunate south Indians in the state. May his tribe increase.
This is the third of a series of columns that will dwell on the issues plaguing Mumbaikars — traffic snarls, uncooperative civic servants, unreasonable landlords, arrogant cabbies and lots more. Watch this space.