Alphabet soup

Salman Rushdie8217;s Shalimar the Clown has a complete chapter devoted to it: the Indian obsession with abbreviations, acronyms 8212; and how the government 8216;file number-type8217; culture pervades our thinking. You will even find it hard to get back to most newspapers after a few days of not reading them, as new unexplained acronyms/abbreviations creep in and start dominating the news. It could stem from the fact that being a very diverse culture, we are desperate to 8216;cut the crap8217; and get more and more clear-cut versions of who is what. Even at a time when each Indian has come to represent a part of many regions, classes and types, there is a part of us that wants to more linearly define and find a prototype for each one of us. So too with faith. Despite the fact that in a country of our size, where dialects, skin colours, food habits and even rituals change every 8 km, we remain anxious to cling to categories that help us define and slot each other more firmly, and what better way to do that than with an alphabet?

An ambitious government form I had to fill in school left me feeling very inadequate. There was one column which said 8216;Religion8217; 8212; asking one to write 8216;M8217; or 8216;C8217; if either Muslim or Christian. Now, born of an 8216;M8217; father and an 8216;H8217; mother, with actually no faith to call my own, I suddenly felt a misfit. My inability to transform myself into an alphabet got worse with time as I married an Atheist an 8216;A8217;?. Left with very little choice but to declare myself an Agnostic, in silent protest at all these single, comfortable alphabets all around me, I settled gingerly for an 8216;Ag8217; Agnostic for two census inquiries, but the horror on the face of the poor school teacher who was taking all this down finally fazed me and I settled for a hyphen.

I still get into long-winded explanations about my 8216;type8217; when asked who I am, so a friend cheekily suggested a new acronym, derived from all three 8212; Hindu, Atheist, Muslim, a succinct 8216;HAM8217;. I must confess I did consider it, but a casual straw poll has again forced me on the back foot. So no abbreviations for me please, it8217;s back to lengthy, somewhat ham-handed explanations.