This is the story of my name. Iit is as racy , as tragic and as comic as your current neighbourhood hit film.. Don't believe me? Read on !
To the onreader , my name looks pretty ordinary..Vandana Jakati. Just a common female name. right? We will see.
My mausi named me Vandana. I had absolutely nothing to do with this act, had no opinion about it and so I accepted it with equanimity . and so I grew up as Vandana..and kept growing with it till about 19 yrs and a few months.. I matriculated, HSSCed and graduated with this name ..Vandana Shankar Tuljapurkar , to be precise. ( For the non marathis here , we MUST mention the name of our father and husband as our middle name or Sacrilege!!! ) To write this three word name on all copies, books, and sundry forms was as simple as breathing...and there I was cruising along with this rather heavy name !
And then marriage happened !
We marathi people have a strange tradition. The husband has a right to change the first name of his wife..as if it is not enough that she is giving up the surname she was identified with so far, the change in identity must be complete..so post marriage the bride has a complete new look name too..and so it happened to me.
To be fair my husband , Ram Jakati did not want to change my name. But I was young, foolish and an idiot. In my family, my mom, my mausi, my buas and most others had a pre marriage and post marriage name and each one had an interesting story that went with it. To top it all, a friend who had got married just a few months ago, too had a swanky new identity to boast.. so I fell to that false ( which realised later after much jhanjhat) glory and insisted on a name change.
After much consultation and discussion, I decided that I would be named Lakshmi post marriage.. So Vandana Shankar Tuljapurkar was to become Lakshmi Ram Jakati.
AND so it happened !!
Next part coming shortly..
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