“Baby name?”
“Krishnan Srinivasan.”
“You’re the mother, Ma’am?”
“Yes.”
“Your name?”
“Gayatri Vathsan.”
Pause.
Whether the pause was because my surname is different from my son’s, or just unfamiliar, I don’t know.
“Vasanthan,” wrote the nurse taking down my son’s case history.
“Not Vasanthan, Vath-san,” I pronounced.
“Watson,” she wrote.
I gently took the pen from her and spelt out my surname—v-a-t-h-s-a-n.
This name has baffled not just that poor nurse. I’ve been renamed Vasanthan, Vastav, Valsan, Vastan…
Over the years, many, many people have fumbled and mangled it.
In fact, it was first murdered about 80 years ago.
Appa always tells this story with great relish.
(Rewind to spotty black and white, or perhaps sepia.)
“Srivathsan,” calls out a stern-looking schoolmaster clad in a spotless dhoti, a black coat, and a turban.
A little fellow in oversized shorts and shirt, serious little face, and ears sticking out from a head of shining, oiled, neatly combed hair stands up to mark his presence in a class of 60 other little ones.
(Here, my sister and I start giggling. Imagining Appa to be anything other than a ramrod-straight six-foot-two man with a stentorian voice is impossible.)
The schoolmaster stares.
“You impudent little urchin! You’ve added a ‘Sri’ for yourself, is it!”
Appa forgot this incident—until he got his school leaving certificate 10 years later.
A certificate awarded to Vathsan, not Srivathsan!
Vathsan is an odd interloper among traditional names, which no one quite knows what to do with.
And I didn’t change my name after marriage.
I rather enjoy people stumbling over it, misspelling it, wondering why I don’t call myself Mrs. Vathsan…
My husband looks on gleefully whenever I patiently help people unmangle the spelling.
