Bel Patri

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 failed just about all subjects.  And yet my name, a word my mother found difficult to pronounce -- she called me Ismirti all her life -- fills me with an indulgent love for her inabilities.

And so my thoughts ran until I was pulled out of my musings by subconsciously registering a B-E-S-T bus waddling most ungracefully towards the cab I was in.  Instantly, I came alive to my immediate, rather gaudy surroundings and the first thing I noticed was the driver, lost in a telephone conversation, manning the wheel with a single, nonchalant hand.  He saw the approaching vehicle at the very last minute and I was squashed against the door as he swerved to escape the hit.  After October this little possibility of an accident left me rather shaken.  However, even after our near-death drama the driver remained completely unmoved and continued chatting over the phone.

From the sound of the conversation, it did not look like a matter of much urgency, and I wanted no part in this godforsaken driver’s conversation, but despite myself I could hear him, and because he spoke in Maithili, my mother tongue, understand everything he said.

“Put any date,” he said to the person on the other side.  “Twelve, thirteen, fourteen, it does not matter.  Any date.”

Then, phone still glued to his ear, he half hung out his window and cursed another driver in the most shameful vocabulary.  The other driver cursed back and drove on.  When our driver returned from his small excursion he frowned into the phone and said, “Mai ke naam?”  Mother’s name?  “Hum nai jaane chhi mai ke naam.”  I don’t know mother’s name.

It was at this point that my interest was a somewhat peaked.  I had never heard such a sentence before, except in movies where little children insist their mother’s name is Mother.  But a grown man saying he did not know his mother’s name was a new one.  I leaned a little forward to hear him better.  Perhaps another B-E-S-T bus dashed towards us at the speed of light, but for just then I did not notice.

“Mai ke naam…Mai ke naam,” the driver mused in a sing-song tone, but nothing came to him.  “No.  Don’t know.  Don’t you know her name?”  He asked the phone.  He listened for a second then laughed.  “Well,” he said, clearly amused.  “She is your mother too.”  Then he was serious again.  “But Mohan, we cannot do this without her name.”

So, my thrill-seeking chauffeur was conversing with his brother who also did not know his mother’s name.

“Mai ke naam…Mai ke naam…” the chorus went.

“Wait,” he suddenly said, “I will call you back in a bit.  Let me ask my wife.”

Ah, I thought.  So, this is not his mother.  This is his wife’s mother.  And Mohan is his wife’s brother.  This made more sense.

Before Mr. Cabbie made the call to his wife he opened the door to his side and spat out a thick glob of spit, then he punched the required buttons on his mobile.   We were in Marine Drive now and traffic was rather fast and potentially dangerous, but of course, in another safer corner of the world, the wife picked her husband’s call.

“Mai ke naam ki hai?” he asked.  What is mother’s name?

And that was that.  The wife did not know.  I was hugely disappointed.

Finally Mr. Cabbie called Mohan again.  “My wife does not know Mai’s name,” he said.  He listened and responded to something in an intrigued voice.  “You did?  And so?  What is her name?”

I leaned forward a little more. 

“Bel Patri?” he asked, confused.  “How can her name be Bel Patri?  Are you sure?”

My question exactly.  How can someone be called Wood Apple Leaf?  Even if the leaf was an offering to Lord Shiva.  Bel Patri did seem like an odd name for a woman.

The driver was frowning – I heard the frown.  “Ask again,” he said.  He waited once more for a response, then frowned harder.  “Chuhiya?  How can a woman be named Chuhiya?”

It did seem highly unlikely.  Chuhiya – Mouse.

In all of this I started thinking of my son’s name.  Apart from Arya I have at least a hundred other names for my son, ranging from Little Piglet for when I am feeling especially affectionate, to Arya Ravindra Venkatramani Krishnamurthy Iyyer! for when I am pissed at him.  Simply through the way he is addressed my son knows his father’s, his grandfather’s and his great-grandfather’s name.  In all of this he knows nothing of his mother’s, his grandmother’s or his great-grandmother’s name.  He knows my name only because I have told him what it is, and not because he is shaped by it.  He does not need to know his grandmother’s or great-grandmother’s names.  I don’t know my grandmother’s or great-grandmother’s names.  It is possible Arya’s children will not know my name.  I don’t like the idea very much.

By the time we stopped outside my colony, Mr. CabDriver was very upset.  “How do we not know Mai’s name?” he demanded.  “This is a crazy situation or what?”

At the gate I paid my fare and though I wanted to lecture him about road etiquette, I held myself.  Instead I asked him about his mother.  “Why do you suddenly need her name?”

“What can I say, Madam,” Mr. Cabbie said.  “She has never seen anything outside our village and now she wants to see Mumbai, so we are bringing her over.  But we need her name to book a ticket, especially if we want a senior citizen discount.  She needs an Aadhaar Card, and a name for that.  She is seventy, at least.  Could be more.  It is a confounding situation.  Who has ever called their mother anything but Mother?  I am going quite out of my mind.  I think I prefer Bel Patri to Chuhiya.  What do you think?”

“It is definitely a unique name,” I agreed.  “And a unique age to go through a naming ceremony.” 

He gave a bemused laugh, then we gave each other a rather awkward nod of farewell and my cabbie was off, and I noticed, back on his telephone.

As I climbed the flight of stairs to get to my apartment I thought of the old woman with her grown children who had seen cities in India while she herself stayed within her home, most likely discarding several names – Bel Patri because she prayed every morning, Chuhiya because she was petite – until she became only one thing, Mother.  Frightening, I thought.  But the urge to step out of her home and her village had forced a name upon her again.  She was going to become Bel Patri.  Bel Patri.  What a pretty name, I thought.  I imagined her in an old cotton saree (green to suit her name), white hair flying as she leaned her forehead against the bars of the train’s window, watching a marvelous world with her aged eyes, coming to meet Mumbai where her son ruled the roads. 

Also read this article here :  https://www.epw.in/journal/2018/31/postscript/‘bel-patri’.html