Smriti Ravindra

I had stepped out of the theatre after watching  Soojit Sircar’s astonishing and beautiful movie October and could not stop thinking about it (really, watch the movie!).  Amongst the many elements of the story I kept returning to, I returned to its protagonist’s name – Shiuli – apparently, a Bengali word for Night Jasmine.  The protagonists’ mother gives her daughter this name because of the daughter’s love for Jasmines -- ephemeral flowers that live and die in the month of October.  Even as I stepped into a cab and even as I stared out its window at the light drizzle that had been our companion for almost a week, I thought of the movie, the name, the significance of names, the reasons we choose names for one another, the ways in which names bind us to the outside world.  My own name, Smriti, is ironic.  Smriti means memory and if there is one thing I am terrible with, it is memorising anything.  School was an ordeal for this reason -- I faile...

I am sure my childhood was not as amusing as my recollection makes it out to be, but even so, when I think of the early eighties, of the years before I turned ten, I remember a delicious chaos.   Streets were not yet crowded with vehicles, parents had not yet learnt to be afraid of every stranger walking the roads, and most nine-year-olds ambled to school without a chaperone or a care in the world.   Bread was white and generously buttered, access to cream biscuits was so limited that devouring several packets, when and if one got the chance, passed for good judgment. Some mothers, mine included, were convinced that Coca Cola could do wonders for the digestive system – what else could one attribute those burps to? – and drinking that delicious liquid out of ordinary steel tumblers while watching Chitrahaar was a family-bonding activity. A dose of thorough spanking for crimes committed and imagined was a requirement for a child’s moral upbringing, and served as a yardstick ...