They call me ‘names’!!!

Sarah, Divya, Diya, Divi, Divs, DJ- different people call me differently!

Well, as per church records, my name is Divya Sarah John. (They say, the child is officially named at the Baptism ceremony, and the name goes down on record for the first time, then!)

I never liked my first name much, the only reason being it was just too common for an uncommon specimen like me! Throughout my school education, I invariably had one or more classmates by the same name (Divya Nair, Divya Joseph, Divya Bhaskar…the list goes on…) One thing that stood different about my name was the Sarah in the middle, which I hated with a passion! The reason for that was quite irrational- I didn’t like the way people pronounced it! Well, one can’t expect to be called “Ms. John”, when one’s born and reared and educated in an obscure town in God’s own country!

In school, they called me “Divya Sarah”, in all premeditation of possible confusion. I wasn’t happy with that either!! It almost sounded like “Divya Sir” pronounced with formidable Mal accent, and the undue ‘respect’ the sound of it brought made me uncomfortable. I personally find the Mal twang we Malayalees give to whatever we talk in- English or Arabic (the second most popular language in Kerala, for obvious reasons) or Hindi, quite remarkable! It gives us quite an identity!

When I reached college (I did my graduation from Chennai), they started callin’ me Sarah, and most of them pronounced it right, and hence I liked it. But lo, there were too many Sarah’s on campus- Sarah John, Sarah Ninan, Sarah Thomas (this list is also as long as the previous one!) and needless to say, they switched to Divya, soon. I continued to be called Divya on my campus in Mumbai too, where I did my post graduation.

On my arrival to Bangalore on my first job, I decided to religiously put down my feet and reiterate to everyone that I prefer being addressed by my middle name. Look up my company ID card and you’d find my call name as Sarah, and you would not even by mistake call me by my first name!

It is funny how I make sound and fury signifying nothing about things which hardly matter! The other day, to my surprise, I told one of my friends when he immediately corrected himself after callin me Divya, “What’s in a name, afterall?!” That got me thinking why I used to be so particular about what people called me. Was it the sense of power that I felt when I seemed to dictate what others should address me as? Was it just childish adamancy that I should feel pleased, at the end of it all? Nevertheless, I know for a matter of fact that I love it when my father calls me ‘Divya’, or when my mother calls me ‘Divi’ or when my special friend calls me ‘Diya’. That’s because, I know that they feel pleased when they call me what they want! At some vulnerable point, I seemed to realize that that’s what counts at the end of the day…so, u r free to call me names- any of these existing ones or newly coined ones, as long as it makes you happy!