I was recently going through the paperback edition of "The Namesake", i had picked up at the airport ,though i never had the privilege to watch the film but perhaps the cover of the book ,depicting the photographs of the two main lead artists drew my attention towards it or you could say i was curious to read the story which the film critics had adorned in the film reviews of the leading Saturday dailies ,and now after finishing the whole book in a single day i think i had not wasted those 300 odd bucks of mine .
Somewhere i also feel connected to the central character "GOGOL" in the book ,though his father named him after nikolai gogol the russian author in a haste to get him released from the hospital ,i was registered under a name "daman" in my school records because my parents could not think of name starting with a letter "P" for four years after i was born and in a haste they stuck to my "good name" ,the name by which i am recognized today ,that's my identity ,i still wonder what would have been the feeling if i had a name starting with a "P" ,but perhaps unlike "GOGOL" it's the name i always wanted ,i made me feel different from my relatives who all had such big sikh names like my father's ,my mothers and my sister's.I felt i was unique.
I don't remember how old i was maybe in standard third... or fourth when a school teacher asked me the meaning of my name ,and frankly i had to answer to it ,my school mates out of sheer curiosity at that age wondered if i was named after the place "Daman & Diu" , and i went on great lengths to explain this was not the case .when i en quired about the origins of my names from my parents they said ,they gave me this good name because my cousin sibling ,three months older then me was named "aman", i felt as i was not important to them ,and they simply decided to give this name without even giving a thought over it .you could all understand the name aman is quite good it has a reason behind it ,it means one who brings peace and calmness but what does daman mean no one had a clue about it ,later i read in my hindi classes the sentence "gandhiji ne angrezzi samaaan ka daman kiya" means he wanted to boycott english goods ,then i wondered whom am i supposed to boycott ??? ,I cried that day and desperately wanted to change my name for once and final . My mom after a bit of fight wrote application to the principal that i wanted to change my name ,my father did make an affidavit supporting it ,when i was half way down the stairs to submit that application in the office ,some thing stopped me i don't know what was it ,perhaps i was scared i would have that big sikh name starting with "P" ,that i would loose my uniqueness among my relatives how difficult would it be tell to so many people about my name change ....after considering all these factors i decided not to change my name ..
The main reason behind was that the my name made me feel separated from my roots ,roots which i never felt to be part of ,was quite embarrassed in front of all my relatives ,hated to go those social gatherings which my father took me too where most of my relatives were not even graduates,never liked their discussions on the topics which i felt were absolutely absurd and that the world had moved and still they were stuck in the dark ages ,where they talked about the importance of looks of a boy and a girl not his or her talent in academics or other fields ,I would say that in spite of following all the religious followings of my religion , i never bother to go the Sikh temple we know as the "gurudwara" ,simply because i am an atheist and i have no problems in admitting it .
It was my name which helped me to have an illusion that i am away from my religion ,though some may think it to absurd it's actually true ,till date i have not bothered to understand the meaning of my name ,i like it for the above reason and it's only five letters long . I helps me as i have to blacken only five bubbles under my name in hundreds of OMR application forms i have filled till now,contrary to my sisters ten !
