Probably the only valuable dialogue in The Conjuring 2 (a Hollywood horror thriller about a couple that helps families deal with haunted homes) was when a corpse converses with the ghost-buster woman giving her a clue about the devil that is present in their midst. The make believe ghost, in a cryptic message said, “It is given and taken, you do not ask for it, but it follows you until death.”  This old man, whose soul was being utilised by a more powerful demon, was hinting at the universal concept of naming someone. Knowing the demon’s name would give another power over it.

All humankind is named when they are born, unless of course you are no one (Game of Thrones). Many cultures believe that the name one is bestowed with, moulds a child’s personality or spells out their destiny. Some African tribes entrust a very deep meaning to the names they give infants, which may even require an entire English sentence to describe its connotation. If one has read Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe the tragic hero Okonkwo would be known. His name means a boy born on the day of a market being held in Nkow. Names with Arabic and Persian origins are also quite cryptic, for the uninitiated. Such is the case with the name I was given. 

More often than not I have been confused for a man and my name misspelt to mean peace in Hindi and Urdu, when introduced in an e-mail, often even when my picture is attached. I am a woman and my name does not mean peace. The peculiarity of my name has also been pointed out to me time and again, with people asking me what it means. Several fun conversations, nick names and dear friends have been the result of this question.

While my name is shorter, yet tricky to comprehend, my mother’s is a more common Muslim name. It also has a very straight-forward and short meaning. My grandmother must have certainly envisaged a bright future for her, with her name meaning a flower in bloom. Born into a household where income was perceived as meager, and the girl child a burden, despite the fact that my grandfather was in the army, and having three sisters, she had to become a resourceful child. She had to learn to use her circumstances in the best possible way, sometimes studying without textbooks and making do with a couple of new clothes a year. To add to that, her siblings did not make it easier either. 

More than being called by her name, she was called by the Hindi translation of a dark eggplant; “a kala baigan”. I have seen her pictures, most of them in black and white format, from school and college time. All I would see was a determined face and kind eyes hidden behind round spectacles. Yes, she was many shades darker than her sisters, her personality outshining nonetheless. 

Although I do not resemble my mother in features, I see my present self in one of her pictures taken at the Taj Mahal in Agra. She has short hair and glasses one would call vintage. Often I sit across at dinner and find myself looking at her face and her impeccable skin. If fair, she would be the kind Indian grooms look for in matrimonial advertisements. It is hard for me to fathom how anyone would consider her not just dark but diminish her to just that.    

However, she reminisces of times she played alone as a child while her older sister continued to badger her over her skin colour. Sometimes she ignored the teasing, at other times she threw things back at her, or if she couldn’t take it anymore, she would even attempt to pack in a punch or two at her sister. 

As if being dark wasn’t enough, she was also diagnosed with myopia. She was shunned further.  Perhaps that’s why she did find solace in sports. She was a quick-to-learn athlete; all her state-level certificates are evidence of that. But there is a different name in these printed honour records. My naani tells me that not everyone could pronounce her name. So they gave her a simpler name for school and college—Beena. An irony, as it means being clear-sighted in Persian. Being “chasmish” killed her confidence a little, probably that she was ineligible for compliments. Neither did my dadi, aunt or uncle let her believe differently after she got married. I am not sure she was ever told that she was beautiful or intelligent. I don’t remember my father flattering her either, at least not in front of us. Her presence, her personality, resilience and her ability to make conversation were taken lightly. 

I did not know of these incidents until, one day, my brother suddenly called me “kaali” on our yearly vacation in North India. I was indignant; the emotion arising mostly from shock. Never had my brother uttered a word like that; especially since we lived as a nuclear family in Mangalore and discussing anyone’s skin color was an alien concept. I was taken aback, I might have even cried. 

Only after we came back from our holiday from our dada’s place did my brother blurt out that a relative had prodded him to call me dark, tempting him with a sweet each time. A vivid memory took me back to every summer vacation when a few minutes each day was evidently reserved for a discussion over the colour of the children who live in the south--us. “You have gotten one shade darker since last year.” “Delhi is suiting you, your colour has cleared up” were the most common utterances. The trope being drilled into us was that “clean equals fair skin”. 

I wouldn’t do justice to myself if I didn’t admit that growing up with the constant Northern obsession over skin colour did not help me as a teenager either. Peering into the mirror I wondered what being fair skinned would mean in daily life. In high school though a classmate once  commented on the way I wore my hair and how it framed my features perfectly. I was confused. The next day I noticed how boys from the school next door would look at me in the bus. Maybe being wheatish wasn’t really a crime?

We are both older now, my mother and I. The untimely death of her husband pushed her to break out of a shell. Moving beyond the lack of appreciation and quashing confidence had become necessary to strive for a decent life for her children. Perhaps that is when envy emanated out of our near and dear ones. It got me thinking of the many times she had done this before. She had learnt Kannada in a few months, just so she could teach us, as kids. She attempted to give new zeal to a loss-making business my father left behind; receiving flack, time and again, for being a woman in a man-dominated field. She was supportive of me picking up a career in humanities and drove me to become independent, financially. Even today, I see her constantly keeping her eye open for things to learn. She has started recording and editing her own food videos. This inner strength has manifested itself in an undeniable glow. She is more confident than ever, yet holding back when confronted by “respectable” elders. But when nudged she assumes an assertive stance again.  

But, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, right (me)? Only recently, my mother’s sister visited us. The siblings went to a salon to get a haircut, when a lady asked my aunt if they were mother and daughter. “No, my daughter is very fair”, said my older aunt, while my mother convulsed with laughter through her wheatish skin, glistening in her kind eyes.