“Bob Marley isn’t my name. I don’t even know my name yet.” Bob Marley.
The realisation that ‘names’ can be a form of endearment and amusement came, when I was married into a quaint waddo of the village of Merces. Unlike today, the landscape was dotted with thatched mud houses of varied shapes and sizes, which had an earthy appeal of its own. These alluring structures housed families who I was to learn had peculiar names.
I was pleasantly surprised when I heard my mother-in-law, referring to the neighbours as one would, some denizens of sorts. It ranged from Bokdo, sheddo, manzor, bangdo to bhikare, poddekar and it went on, finally, she paused dramatically and proclaimed profoundly – we are better known as Cammotin Typist. Amchehai, meaning her better half, had established a Stenography Institution, a one of its kind, in Panjim, which predated the liberation of the State. We use to have Portuguese/English typewriting, and we had virtually every youngsters from far and near enrolling here. She stopped as she reminisced the golden era of her life with nostalgia.
As I listened raptly, I wondered how the others had earned such strange names. Much like UIDAI or something to that extent, these unusual names were more like an unique identification that overrid their original surnames. Fortunately or unfortunately, this practice is fast fading.
I remember how my son’s friend had come visiting and my mother-in-law was in the balcao, as was her practice and she casually asked his name. The boy hardly 10 told her very fluidly his first name and surname. She looked at him quizzingly, where do you reside young man, she questioned and happily volunteered to prompt. Is it adjacent to the kopel, or the crooked maad which had probably vanished from the face of earth, after grilling a couple of minutes, she finally like the GPS mapped and pinned him down as ‘Sheddo’. Arra, you should have said so she said accusingly, I know your entire family. Then she got into asking the whereabouts of his family members. I could see the discomfort on the tiny fella’s face. I rescued him from her clutches.
Her attention then shifted to me, I good-humouredly asked her, how come these families earned such nicknames. She looked at me, scoffed and replied, it could probably be traced back to some features, profession, habit, obsession, some quirk which stuck to the person. There is a possibility that families shared same surname so such tags helped to differentiate. I wondered if any social anthropologist had studied this practice.
She went ahead to share an incident that enabled a clever, illiterate man to acquire the title of ‘Shastri’ (Learned man), without going through the grill of educating himself. Well, all that this guy had to do was give some coins to the village kids and ask them to shout Shastri – Shastri, the moment they spotted him in the market streets. He in turn would feign anger and annoyance, but they were to ignore, and continue this practice. This went on for a couple of weeks, and before long his feigned discomfort earned him coveted title of Shastri, without much efforts.
Well, I sighed, names sure had abundance of history attached.
