What’s in a name?

Being told by his wife that ‘Nargees’ had called, my friend Kanaiha Belari was amused for a while, before the disappointing realisation that the caller was a much earthier Varghese. Given the metamorphoses my name undergoes in Patna, I am now immune to the mutilations inflicted on my identity. I am also used to colleagues confusing my first name and surname. I take all calls for Baurgis, Barghheesh, Sharghees, etc, assured that others in the office are named much more sensibly, Sharma, Ganagprasad and Ramji. The Congress is not a party one can accuse of innovation, but its state president sent a new year greeting addressed to Vargese ‘Kumar’ George, graciously expanding my initial K, which denotes Kuchenparampil, my family name. Since no Bihar discussion can be complete without Laloo: he pronounces my name correctly, but calls several other people also Varghese.

My identity crisis in Patna extends beyond my name. At Patna’s Model Jail in Beur, when I noticed guards not wearing name badges, I thought of doing the smart thing and reporting the matter to Jasawan Bhaghat, the jail minister. He stared at me with the kind of curiosity one would normally bestow upon an alien, and did not say a word. His deputy, Ashok Choudhary, who had taken 15 calls from his ministerial colleagues after suspending a jail staff, knows why. Ditto with the police constables. Several times I tried to track, just for the sake of it, the names of constables drinking sattu at the roadside vendor’s and not paying the two rupees for it. I also tried to see the name of the officer who was counting notes with a complainant sitting alongside him at a police station. He too was not wearing his name badge.

If it is in anonymity that crime and corruption thrive in the city, it is namedropping and bullying that insulates one from the law, and at times even gives access to it. The officer who refused to take my FIR on losing my cellphone did so only after I told him that I was journalist. “Sirf aap keliye ham kar rahe hain,” he explained his largesse.

Not a single two-wheeler — with perhaps the my honourable exception — flaunts its registration number plate. Jai Mata Di, Arvind Yadav, Police, State Bank, LIC, etc, seem to serve as identification. The newly acquired vehicles of “Patna SSP” and “City SP” were running well into the fourth week without numbers. My sagging confidence in India’s secularism was boosted recently — I spotted Bismillah too.

As evolution takes its toll, when someone finally calls me “Bageesh Yadav”, I would probably have done away with my bike’s registration marks — or even better, graduated to a Bolero, the preferred vehicle of the social justice gang. Someone here tells me, no one is born a Bihari, one becomes a Bihari.