What's in a name?

-

My sister texted me from the other room today. It was a hilarious conversation as always. But then, staring at her name saved on my phone I realized – We don’t have nicknames! We are the one-name and one-name-only gang. I'm not sure how many of you reading this will relate. But Charlotte and I have had to wait three seconds into someone calling our name out to know if they wanted to talk to Lin or Let! The other ‘perks’ of being born with no loving nicknames our loved ones called us is that we got ridiculously attached to our names.

Now this does not mean we never got our fair share of nicknames or accidentally mispronounced names! Over the quarter century, I have spent on this planet, in chronological order, I have been called – SST, Lin, Ms Thomas, Shar, Sherlin, Shalini (a go-to for tele-callers), Shalu, Sharu, Sheru, Shera and my personal favourite – Sara.

How I got my name is a conversation starter I often use to break the ice with new people. Let’s just say it was a communication error between my parents and the 90s had no telephones to course-correct from long distances. I spent my whole life trying to make people enunciate the ‘aa’ in my name only to realise that most mistakes people made were dialect-related and not deliberate.

I started being called SST in the 3rd grade. That stuck till the 10th grade. My favourite teacher would call me Ms. Thomas. Then I switched schools. I spent my entire 11th grade being called Sara because my new teachers and classmates just could not remember my name. Even to date my now-retired Geography teacher still remembers me by that name. 

I first got called Shar in college. That stuck like glue! I go by Shar in all my personalized letters and all my customized t-shirts. My loving friends called me Shar or Shera depending on the friend circle.

In the field, I just go by Sara because it’s easy to remember, takes a step back from overly personalizing the work I am doing (detachment is key!) and makes me feel closer to my daadi (I got her name as my middle name, cause I am the elder daughter)

At home, I still am good ‘old Sharlin. All desperate attempts to find a meaning to my name just left me with nothing. But I have really grown to adore my name. It has a nice ring to it. And by custom if I have a granddaughter someday, and if her parents will it like mine did, my name will be her middle name. I hope she loves it as much as I do.

Now, what really is the point of all of this I am yapping? Honestly...absolutely nothing! Cause, what’s in a name anyway?

Comments

  1. AnonymousJuly 3, 2024 at 10:21 PM

    What’s in a name all of these point to you that’s all matters in the end.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Humility and Joy

-
My dearest Binu achen, I'm sitting here at church. It's the 8th of June. In a week from now, it will be seventeen years since you left for your heavenly abode. The educational scholarship offering we collect in honour of your memory... it's helped so many kids study in the past two decades. Is it a coincidence that your death anniversary coincides with my ammachi's? I think not. You were one of the few people who smiled with their eyes - true Joy's fruit of the Spirit. I remember exactly where I was when I heard the news - in my room at home in Kerala, far away from reality. I never got to see you then. I was too young to understand the depth of the loss when you passed away. A part of me is glad that the only image in my head of you is the smiling, cheerful one.  Every time I pick a badminton racket, I remember you. The centre youths host a badminton tournament in your name every year. In all of Lord's glory, atleast we know that you left this world doing what ...
Read more

Precocious Grief

-
I have been sitting with this thought for months now. Virtually unable to pen it down until I saw this reel that really triggered me enough to let my emotional bucket overflow. I am reaching an age where chances of me losing a loved one to time are greater than finding new souls to call my own. And I don’t know what I am supposed to do with that. I am a future-focused thinker, no matter how hard I try to be present in the moment. So when I meet my friends, or talk to my parents, sit with my partner, or laugh with my sister, I am actively dreaming up a reality in my head where they won’t be with me. Then there is also the thought, What if I am the one to fade away first? I am petrified of what my last memory would be in the minds of the people who matter to me. Since ammachi’s death I have been extra careful of how I end conversations and meetings with people who own a part of my soul. Is this normal? – To experience grief way before I have truly experienced it as reality. Am I losing o...
Read more

Who is a woman?

-
She is a daughter, a sister, a friend and mother and so much more. Being a woman in the 21 st century, I am sick and tired of this line being used as the opening and closing of every International Women’s Day speech. Even though I take pride in being a responsible daughter, a loving sister, a caring friend and hopefully, a wonderful mother some day, it is high time that someone took the onus to elaborate on the ‘so much more’ in every woman’s story. Who is a woman when she is not someone defined by virtue of the role she plays to make other’s lives better. 1.   She is someone with her own needs : Being a woman entails being the nurturer, the giver. But no one ever said anything about ONLY being a giver. Since time immemorial, women have been the O+ blood group for the people around them, universal donors! Little do they know, even as she gives, she keeps emptying a cup that sometimes no one bothers to fill- with a little love, patience and kindness! 2.   She once was a on...
Read more

Clear is Kind

-
It’s been nearly two years since I started my PhD program, and I have spent most of my time reading the works of those who came before me. I fairly enjoy reading difficult texts. I’ve been the kind of person who, as a child, would read a dictionary for fun, carry it along to decode complex verses in unabridged versions of Shakespearean plays and 18th-century novels. But somehow, despite all that training, I still find academic papers to be the toughest lot I have ever tackled. Having spent one year navigating through corporate jargon at work, I really thought academia would be different. Silly me! At first, I believed it was my lack of conceptual clarity that caused these problems around comprehension. But as time went by, I realised, sometimes it’s really not the reader’s fault! First, I had to figure out how to get through pesky publisher paywalls. Then I realised, it is better to take an open-access publishing as the positionality for my work than struggle senselessly with c...
Read more

Faster than the speed of light

-
I t's 30th January 2025. Another month is coming to an end. The pace at which each day has been moving since I turned an adult is astronomical. Do you feel that way too? It's like each individual day doesn't feel too fast but time in general, it's sprinting. Is time faster than the speed of light? No? It certainly feels so to me. I was sixteen a blink ago. And now I am twenty six. Closer to turning forty than I was to being a goofy ten year old. But that is also the beauty of it all. I have always wanted to be an adult. To have complete autonomy over my time and space. Not to say that I didn't have any growing up. But I find it easier to live with each passing day. Twenty five felt like an awakening. Twenty six feels like an island breeze. I feel calmer, more in control of myself, more willing to make choices that serve me best regardless of how people around me may feel. I also feel my energies shifting. This year I did not cut a birthday cake but I spent a whole w...
Read more

A couple questions

-
It was a chilly afternoon. We were sitting in class, waiting for our professor to show up. It was one of the few classes in which our brains were really worked up over seemingly fundamental truths and questions to be answered.  One such question we were asked that day was this - Who are you? A simple question at the surface, but something too profound to grapple with. I remember that day, nineteen-year-old me wrote ten long sentences describing my ethnicity, religious affinity, birth order, abilities, talents, various social groups I belonged to, and the roles and titles I held as a person.  Now, twenty-six year old me wonders - if I strip away my social identity and the roles I play, who am I then? Here's what I think -  I am a dreamer. Someone who cooks up stories through her writing, rewrites her past in her brain, and runs the trains of mindless thoughts into her unpredictable future. I love entering into the worlds created by others through their art - be it books, m...
Read more

Coffee and Complaining

-
I don’t talk about my faith very much. Even though it is one of the most important aspects of my life, I have always presented a watered-down, secular version of it in public. But that is really not the case. In an attempt to make weekend plans with me, a very close friend of mine said, “I keep losing you to church”. Interestingly, that has always been the case. Since I was a very little kid, Sundays were always for church. For twenty-five years, my schedule looked like this – Monday to Saturday: School/College/Work; Sunday: Church. You may ask – when does this girl take a break? Honestly, I don’t think I have had one till I entered into my PhD program and switched to taking up remote work assignments. Sundays continue to remain for church. But this is not about how I spend my Sundays – this is about my faith journey. Five minutes ago, in my morning worship, I read this Bible verse – ‘How beautiful are the feet of those who bring good news’ (Romans 10:15b). And it follows ‘faith co...
Read more

The First Season

-
I just read on the internet that at 26, you are only on the first season of F.R.I.E.N.D.S. And this got me thinking. Where exactly am I in the 'first season' of this life? 1. I am on my 20th day of re-starting to work out again. 2. It's my first month of learning how to play the violin. 3. My fifth month of being married. 4. Eight months since I published my first research paper in an International Journal. 5. A little over a year as a PhD scholar. 6. Two years and two months since I published my first book - Shades of Love. 7. Two years and six months to my very first adult job. 8. Three years to have graduated with a Master's Degree. 9. Three years to have lost my ammachi. 10. I am celebrating the fifth year of my blog on May 7th. 11. Six years since I first learnt how to play the ukulele. 12. Eight years to my first VBS leader experience. 13. Nine years of my bonus life. 14. Ten years since I graduated my 10th grade. 15. Thirteen years since I first felt in love w...
Read more

PhD and Periods

-
It’s been ten months since I joined my PhD program and it seems like sufficient time for me to talk about my experience so far – specifically about…my menstrual cycle! I have been an academic girlie my whole life, but I never quite realized how much my hormonal cycle was affecting my work productivity, till I joined for PhD. The most salient feature of any PhD program is the need for self-discipline and the volume of creativity to get through any work assignment that comes one’s way. This means that for the first time in 25 years – I was the true master of my own time. I believe this is the reason why in over a decade of being declared a woman, my brain never registered signs of my body backing down, each time I was close to my periods. Having a factory-set routine can really numb these signs. I was proud of myself for being able to travel four hours a day, work eight hours, six days a week and then make it to church every Sunday. But ever since last October, when my body finally had...
Read more

Till death do us part - Season 1

-
It’s official! It has been one full year since I stood in front of what felt like a million people and claimed this one man to be my lawfully wedded husband. And what a year it has been! There was unsurmountable joy, irrevocable sadness, fear of the unknown, feeling stuck, peace beyond reason, learning things about oneself like never before, and changes – so many changes! For someone who grew up on order and plans, I watched my world crumble and get back together in a year. I had only heard in myths and stories, how much yoking with someone you call your own could change every part of you. But now, one full trip around the sun as a married woman, I know. So here goes, lessons learnt from season one of the ‘till death do us part’ saga– The curse of newness – When things are new, everything feels giddy. The world opens up to new possibilities that the mind is jet-set-ready to explore. But when the dust settles and the sheen is gone, you realise the importance of what you left behin...
Read more