Adrita

Whoever thought of such a name!!  I shook my head in frustration after yet another failed attempt to explain the septuagenarian next to me, Adrita as in Aadrita... then why the hell second A is missing..we have kept it simple..mom's standard reply...oh really..Aditya, Adwita etc etc simple really.

Born in Delhi to East Bengali or to be precise to sylheti parents,(whose parents were in turn uprooted from another land),torn between Hindi, Bengali, the strange sounding Bengali I heard all speaking at home... I never knew which language to pick up. I remember picking up Hindi early in life.. guess it was a safe bet. And the yearly struggles when they took me to their respective home towns...my attempt to frame Bengali sentences...ridiculed by the other children at times but most of the times I loved the attention as they watched me speaking the language of the movies effortlessly. But why Adrita... Well there wasn't consensus in any more name...Mom used to say...Neera was my first choice ..from some Bengali poetry..But then people started saying it was an old name..so what next...i loved Mohona..u know where river meets the sea...your both grandmoms had objection...no naming after river...( imagine in the land of Ganga Yamuna Kaveri Sipra Narmada!!)...your teetu ( maternal grandma was teetu) dished out names after names from Bengali soaps Oishi, Oindrila and thammu ( paternal grandma) was after a name with 'K'.. Kanaya...to prevent the onslaught of K I dished out Adrita ( suggested by Teetu as she heard the name of a participant in Sourav Ganguli's show) and my own Drishti...and when the priest inserted chits of the three or four names under the earthen lamps...Adrita lasted longest...so here I was Adrita!

Then the constant frowns Adrita is it humidity...from Adrata I guess...nnooooo from Aadar...mom's standard reply..Aadar as in love in Bengali and not the kind of respect as in Hindi...I heard these the umpteenth time from mom. Why did they move to Delhi...why not stay contented wherever they were rather than dragging their world with them...was what I wondered in my teens..and yes I knew the answer ..to make it big or simply for living...but torn between rice and roti, Bengali , Hindi , some Punjabi and Jat...Durga Puja and Diwali, fish and rajma...huh who would understand my daily battles...

My flight took off finally from Delhi International Airport...after some normal hitches...and I turned my  the window after the not-so-smooth conversation with the elderly lady besides me..lingering over my name. Delhi was slowly vanishing from my eyes...I was touching the skies and within half an hour I would enter Pakistani sky...and then few more hours to Europe. How would I name the life inside me..an Indian name of course and spend few minutes explaining...as I am dragging little bit of home with me just as my parents did...and assert my existence in the land I live and force my child to feel in the world we are no longer a part of...