Name, place, religion thing

 

“’Tis but thy name that is my enemy;”

Like many people, I’ve never been particularly fond of my name.

Aalap. Aal-ap. Al-aap. Al-lap. Pronounce it how you will, it’s an average name in the global context of names. When anglicised, very few people are able to spell it, let alone pronounce or know what it means. Not that I expect them to; until recently it wasn’t a common name here. Besides, if you’re going to have a name – a device that facilitates the unobtrusive identification of people – you might as well have an easy one. One that’s simple to pronounce and spell. Sure, such a name would become really common and wind up shirking its identification responsibilities. 

But a name that, in wrapping your head around it, seeps the energy out of you is unnecessary in a world where there’s so much to put up with anyway. Nowhere is this more applicable than in India, where name misspellings and mispronunciations are a common occurrence. With so many religions, communities and languages in a single country, people are bound not to be familiar with every name (unlike, perhaps, Japan or China or Spain where maybe you’re at least able to pronounce and spell most names). And my name is no exception to this misspelled/ mispronounced norm besieging the world of uncommon names.

If you ask me, names, in the larger scheme of things, are no more than a by-product of an existence: life, and assimilation into society are the two main precursors to having one. In some cases you can even do away with either (one of my friends has a guitar named Beatrice, another a car named Grey). 

Recently my friend Leek and I were talking about a world from where names altogether have been eradicated. “Replaced with unique codes comprising numbers and letters,” he said. “That way no one’s pigeonholing you right from the first hello.” Now, that’s a bit radical; names are an essential part of community living. Besides, in some ways they’re also an extension of your personality. But I see some sense in his thinking. 

The thing with names is that they’re not as innocuous as they may seem. Some betray their bearers’ religion, others their geographic origins, yet others, in some cultures, their social standing. And it doesn’t end there. “In modern society,” Leek tells me, “each of our minds has developed a tiny goblet that performs efficient systematics: you pop in someone’s name, and out pop all kinds of conjectures about their personality, character, beliefs. Add to it a person’s physical features, and you have the perfect recipe for a dish I call instant judgement.” 

Suddenly I find myself worrying about my looks. I’m of medium complexion and build, with average features. It’s vague, I know, but that’s the best way to put it. So, my name’s ambiguous and my looks nondescript, which, really, should be no big deal. “Except, when you look like you don’t belong anywhere,” Leek says, “people take it upon themselves – based on what pops out of their goblets – to assign you somewhere. A place the goblet deemed fit for you, in step with its impervious understanding of this world.” The shit Leek can come up with.

A religion-neutral name like mine, which doesn’t betray much else about me either, puts me in a position to nuzzle up under a cloak of identity ambiguity. Which works in my favour considering I’m the consummation of a Hindu/ Christian marriage. Most mixed faith children wind up practicing (if at all) both religions. Some don’t, and stick to either faith. This happens very commonly in cities, among Hindus, Christians, Muslims, Sikhs, Jains, and pretty much people of every religion. Me, I’m the kind who grew up practicing both religions. Believing in two sets of Gods. Not exactly the childhood of Pi, though; I never cared for theology growing up. I did, however, from time to time go to the temple with my paternal grandmother. And when visiting my mother’s side of the family, church, participating on more than one occasion in a Christmas Eve bible quiz. 

At this point I must pause to mention that my report card at school read Hindu (I now fail to see how that information is pertinent to a report card but it mentioned religion right below your full name). 

I must also add that mine is a vague surname, one most Indians can’t place in a religion or geographic bracket. I went to a school where Hindu religious scriptures were part of our curriculum and we sang prayers out of the Bhagvad Gita. Even so, much like any other school here, it was a liberal place where students of all religions and communities mingled with each other with ease. This culture pretty much seeped into my later years as well, through high school and then college.

Over time I learnt that, in essence, we’re an accommodating people. We always have been. Immerse yourself in a mixed-faith society long enough and you’ll learn to live with each other’s quirks. The thing is, we’re similar in a lot of ways, and different in an equally large number of ways. And seeing as how a majority of us is so big on religion, one of the few times we’re required to interact with each other in large numbers is around festivals. 

Festivals here are celebrated with a fierce exuberance – we’re loud, we throng roads, hold up traffic, litter, pollute. It’s like a gulf emerges to separate the Celebrators from the Disgruntled. The resulting chasm is between those partaking in the celebrations and those inconvenienced by them. So out of all the days in a year, it is invariably around festivals that the Disgruntled find themselves upset about the interminable traffic, poor infrastructure, bad drainage, overcrowding, etc. 

This goes on for as long as the celebrations last, usually anywhere between eight days to a month. And right after, the gulf recedes, uniting the two factions again. The prevailing sentiment immediately after a holiday season is of a fresh start. Like someone – a nameless, omnipresent entity – emptied each goblet, cleaned it thoroughly, and put it out to dry. And in the space where it rested, hit the giant reset button: boink. A round, creaky, spring-powered button that wrests you into reality and gets your life back into gear. 

Back to work, school, college, office. In the company of colleagues, classmates and peers, to start conversations on what transpired, to share sweets, stories, memories. 

Then on to daily routines. Most times conversations on religion – beliefs, practices, faith – between Celebrators and the Disgruntled happen around festival season. But put my name in your goblet and you’ll find I’m not the kind of person who likes to talk about religion. Not to acquaintances, especially. And sure enough, very few people I’ve come across in daily life – people with super active goblets – strike up conversations with me on religion. Very few.

Until someone does.

I’m 25 now. Wherever I’ve been, because of various reasons, my religion and ethnicity never really have been an issue. In both big cities and small, and within India and abroad. I should also mention that I’ve travelled a fair amount, but also lived quite a sheltered life. I fit easily among Hindus and Christians, and have a passable understanding of both religions. Just enough knowledge to sail through Disgruntled-level conversations about either festival season. Somehow this irks my partner Ashi, also my age and a product of a Hindu/ Sikh marriage. She’s of the opinion that I like to curry favour with all kinds of people, and leverage my mixed heritage to that end. I don’t particularly agree with her hypothesis. But I’ll have to admit she knows me rather well, and for reasons that are best left unsaid I always tend to run with what she feels. It doesn’t bother me too much anyway; at least I’m not doing the opposite.

By and large my name is religion neutral. However, the numerous mutations it spouts, as it turns out, inveigle themselves to the Muslim populace. And by extension, me. I don’t see this as a problem per se. Sometimes it’s helpful to have it that way, and sometimes, I’ll admit, it’s not. Mostly I don’t even get caught up thinking about it. But as my name is misspelled and mispronounced quite a lot, I go around correcting people quite a lot. Conversations of that kind usually go:

“Hi, what’s your name?”

“Aalap.”

“What?”

“Aalap.”

“Aalat?”

“Aalap, Aalap.”

“Alam?”

“Aaaa-laaaaa-p.”

“Altaf?”

At this point I decide to spell it out for them.

“A-A-L-A-P.”

“L-A-A-L-…P?”

So it goes on.

I’ll admit it’s not that bad, much worse happens in life. But after a point it does get a bit exasperating. Go around correcting people long enough and you start thinking you’re the one at fault. So I do as much as I can, and sometimes in cases where it’s not important (like apartment building registers), I leave spellings uncorrected. In cases where it matters, though, the approach is always this. Fifteen seconds of an unnerving name tennis, then spelling it out. To an extent, in doing this I run the risk of spelling out my religion. And mostly I don’t bother about it.

Until I do.

“Real Cool World”

It was the month of the Muslim festival Ramadan. A month when Muslims fast through the day, consuming their first meal at sunset, then eating at various intervals through the evening and into the night. A large section of the Muslim population in India observes this tradition.

My friend Su asked me to take her seven-year-old son Kai to the bookshop. Ramadan that year coincided with summer holidays, and Su wanted Kai to finish his reading before school started. I didn’t feel like driving, and it was too hot to walk, so Su called up her driver. “Haq, Aalap sir and Ashi madam want to take Kai to the bookshop. Please drive them there.” Within five minutes Haq was parked on her front porch in a swanky grey-white 2010 Mitsubishi Outlander.

This particular bookshop, Gram Books, was at the intersection of two perpetually busy roads. I’d driven past it countless times but never been inside. Partly because it shut too early, around 7 pm or so. But also because it was located in such an awkward place you only remembered it existed when crossing the intersection. 

Gram Books was nestled in a two-storeyed building with a glass façade, its name displayed prominently in block neon lettering on a huge signboard above its ground floor entrance. We turned off the main road into its parking lot slightly after half past four. Haq dropped us off at the entrance, and Kai took Ashi’s hand and ran straight up to the kids’ section on the second floor. I followed them.

For the next half hour Kai browsed through – and scampered between – various sections of books. I did my own bit of browsing through strange-looking titles with covers so thick it seemed they were made out of wood. Things had changed, though. For starters, everything was prohibitively expensive (the price tag on a ninth standard biology textbook for a new board read Rs 1,599). The authors I’d grown up on – Enid Blyton, Katherine Applegate, RL Stine – were nowhere to be found. In their place were Geronimo Stilton, Rick Riordian, Katie Daynes, Ashley Spires, Kobi Yamada. Unable to keep pace with Kai’s sprinting I picked up ‘The Strange Story of Felicity Frown’ by Ken Spillman and took a seat on an elevated deck than ran along the length of the window. Ashi went down to the poetry section.

Kai settled on two things – a book on Pirateology by Dugald Steer and a do-it-yourself paper planes Origami kit. I paid at the counter, had the cashier wrap them up in paper, and we left the bookshop. Back in the parking lot Kai got into the backseat, and Ashi took a seat next to him. I got in the front passenger seat. No sooner had Haq driven out of the parking lot than I heard the crisp rip of paper in the back. It was Kai, greedily scrambling through his pile of recently acquired goodies. Good that some things never really changed.

“Why are there so many skull-capped men on the road today?” Ashi asked me as soon as we took a right at the intersection.

“Ramzan,” I said.

“Okay, but why do they have to crowd the street?”

Rhetorical Questions feat The Disgruntled. A popular number on festival soundtracks. I’ve had similar conversations in big cars and small, with strangers and acquaintances, friends and family. The Disgruntled are like grunge-era rock stars. They complain, then they forget.

So I shrugged and, gazing out the window, started iTunes on my phone. I lined up some David Bowie and plugged it into the car system using an aux wire. Ashi was typing away on her phone and Kai remained engrossed in his origami set. We passed the group of skull-capped men and turned a corner near Uruj Beach.

So far this love is delightful
The face of seduction was you
But I listened for each and every footstep
In this Real Cool World

“Do you keep roza?”

Boink.

“Uh… sorry?” I lowered the volume, imploding into reality.

“Roza. Do you keep it?” It was Haq.

“Um, roza? Me?”

“Yeah. During Ramadan. It’s so hot nowadays it’s difficult to keep it every day. I try, but it’s not easy at all. The hunger really gets to you and wrests the insides of your stomach.” The dashboard clock showed just past 5.30 pm. It was probably around the time Haq broke his fast.

“Well… it is really hot nowadays, I’ll give you that,” I chipped in.

“Too hot,” Haq chimed in, running a palm over his sweaty forehead. “I take the train downtown from Naha, and it gets me to Uruj in an hour and a half. I leave home early morning on a full stomach, and by the time I get here I’m hungry. Can you believe it? It’s that hot.”

“Yeah…” I said.

“I’ve grown used to it now, this routine. But there was a time it wasn’t like this. Not for me, at least, you know, sir?” Haq said.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean… it was so different before. Ramadan, Eid. I grew up in a small village in UP. It was mostly just us, Muslims, in that area, and Ramzan was always such a big deal.”

“I’m sure it’s just as big a deal now,” I interjected.

“Yeah, sure, I mean I’m not saying it isn’t. But it was just so different back in the day, in that time. As kids, Ramadan was something we’d anxiously wait for. I don’t know, it might’ve been very different for you, but we looked forward to these daylong fasts. And we did them with so much ease. Then from sunset to dawn we ate like there was no tomorrow.”

We hit traffic on the esplanade overlooking the beach, inching forward through the concourse. I rolled down my window and lit up a cigarette. Usually on such occasions, around this point in the conversation Ashi has already added her pennyworth on my habit of trying to belong everywhere. Conversations of that kind usually go:

Acquaintance: “Have you visited the Ganpati pandal at Dar?

Me: “No, but I’d really like to.”

Ashi: “Oh right, I forgot, you’re Hindu today.”

Or:

Acquaintance: “Have you ever kept Lent?”

Me: “I did one year, I’d like to once again. Maybe next year.”

Ashi: “Ah, when you’re Christian again.”

So it goes on.

“Nowadays, it’s not the same,” Haq said, honking at a scooter. “In fact, I felt a sense of dread this year when I found out Ramadan was coinciding with peak summer. I almost thought of giving up roza altogether. But then, you know how it is…”

I nodded, taking a long drag on my cigarette. From the corner of my eye I noticed Ashi looking at me a couple of times. Then as she went back to typing her phone rang, and she answered with a terse hello. Thank God for corporate jobs where you’re working even when you’re not at work, and vice versa. I checked on Kai who was trying to decipher instructions from a manual. 

Outside, the Ramadan sun seemed worn out from the sweltering heat. It was straining itself to shine for another hour, maybe slightly less, after which it would tuck into a fat meal and switch right off until tomorrow.

“In our village, Ramadan celebrations are almost the same every year,” Haq continued. “As kids, we’d save up about 20 or 30 rupees through the year, pocket money and such, then blow it all on movies and food right before Eid. A movie ticket in the local cinema hall cost five or six rupees, and a rice snack another rupee or so. We’d break roza every day, eat a snack by the lake, stroll along the market road, maybe watch a movie. It was so much fun. Some days we’d have relatives or family friends come over from a neighbouring village, and even though we didn’t know them we’d be so excited just to have visitors. We’d take their kids down to the market, buy them a snack, take them to the lake. And then come back home exhausted, only to be served fresh dates, almonds, pistachios that some relative got back from Dubai or Doha or Saudi.” He paused to glare at the back of his hand, moving slowly forward through the line of cars. We reached a stoplight. 

“Was it the same when you were growing up, sir?”

“Uh, well…” I turned around. Ashi was still on the phone, a tense look on her face. The stoplight turned green.

“My father,” I said, “lived in the Middle East – Muscat, to be specific – for a number of years. During Ramadan most days he ended up observing roza not of his own volition but because he couldn’t find any restaurants there serving food during fasting hours. Me, I’ve never really done it. Plus, I don’t know if I can give up my smoking habit, so I’d never be able to do it anyway.”

Haq smiled. “Every time I feel like breaking my fast, a strength inside me wells up until it’s eaten through my hunger. Until it’s non-existent. I don’t know what it is. Maybe the will of Allah.”

“Maybe,” I say.

“Do you go to the mosque often, sir?”

“Not really, I don’t. I would love to, though.”

“You should, sir. It’s a different kind of feeling. It’s amazing the kinds of things group immersion can make you feel and do. There’s a new mosque that’s just opened near madam’s house. I go there to break my roza every day. I’ve made some new friends over there. They’re also from the village, like me. We talk about all kinds of things – our childhood, our kids, our families. You know, sir, driving around in this city is not easy. On a hungry stomach, you lose your temper very easily. But after a hard day’s work when I go there in the evening, right before breaking my fast, suddenly I’m not exhausted or angry anymore. Suddenly I see sense in things. Suddenly I’m part of something bigger, something that gives me meaning, that validates my sacrifice. And that feeling’s enough to take me through another day of no food or water.”

“Hmm,” I said.

“If you want, sir, the next time you’re this side of town I could take you there,” Haq said.

“Yeah, sure,” I said.

We drove past a Protestant church through a narrow road into an East-Indian settlement flanked with Punjabi fast-food restaurants. “Yeah… no, it cannot wait,” Ashi was saying on the phone.

“Sir, are you getting bored?” Haq asked as we turned another corner in a narrow alleyway not far from Su’s bungalow.

“No, of course not,” I said, carefully aiming my cigarette at an open gutter and flicking it in just as we made the turn.

“You know, Ramadan was special for one more reason. It was the only time during the year we got to dress really well. Our parents would buy us clothes once or twice a year, and the good ones remained in the cupboard until Ramadan. On Eid we’d pick out our finest, sparkliest attires, iron them, put them on and go out to celebrate. Nowadays you look around on the street and everyone is so well dressed, special occasion or not. People take so much care to look their best – people like you and madam – even if it is to go to the neighbourhood restaurant for dinner. You all carry yourselves so well, speak so smartly. It just feels like to become people like you means to celebrate every day of your life. You know, I have a son who’s now four. My father never went to school, and sent me to an Urdu-medium school in our village. But my son goes to an English-medium school. I’m teaching him Arabic so he can read the Quran, but his first language is English. And that’s because I want my kid to live that life, your kind of life. And because Allah has made it possible for you, I know he’ll make it possible for him too. Maybe this hope gives me the strength I need to fast every day.”

Boink.

The sun had almost set when we stopped outside the bungalow gates. The frantic chirping of evening birds was soundtracked by a humid wind lightly wending through a cluster of palm trees. The atmosphere signalled the beginning of pre-monsoon showers. And some respite from the abrasive heat, for Haq and his people. The watchman opened the gate. 

Haq drove straight over to Su’s patio and braked sharply right by her front door.

Kai was the first to exit the car and run straight in. Ashi and I got down, and I said bye to Haq, who smiled and nodded. “Sir, I almost forgot,” he said. Then, fishing out his cell phone, “I want to take you to the new mosque one of these days. Can you give me your number so I could call you up and fix a time?”

“Sure,” I said. I gave him my number.

“Thanks, sir. Alif, correct?” he said.

On impulse I went, “Aal…” and abruptly stopped. I stole a glance at his screen. He’d typed the first two letters – A, L – and was waiting for me to help him with the rest. It all came down to the last two letters.

What’ll they be today?

Hindu? Christian? Muslim? The remaining letters would decide everything.

Our plans hinged on the English alphabet. I decided to spell it out.

“I, F,” I said. “A-L-I-F.”

‘I, F’ he typed and hit save. He looked at me and smiled one last time, putting his cellphone back in his shirt pocket.

I shut the passenger seat door and walked around the car towards Ashi. She walked up to me, still glued to her phone, and took my hand as we went in through the front door. Once again I said a silent prayer thanking God for corporate jobs.

Which God I prayed to is a story for another time.