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My name – Sosha – was the bane of my life while growing up. Because it was so uncommon, no one seemed to get either the pronounciation or the spelling right. One of our neighbours at Khushnuma Apts in Bombay (Mumbai) insisted on calling me “Saucer” – she genuinely believed that was right! And i was too young and afraid to correct her, though I did try once… The other kids would tease and torment – making up a sing-song rhyme “Sosha, dosa, samosa…” until I invariably burst into tears and fled to our 9th floor apartment, railing at my parents for giving me such a name!
When we moved to Dar-es Salaam, however, mine was just one of many exotic names from around the world at school – IST – Venla from Finland, Yuko from Japan, Gunther from Germany, Carmen from Peru… Morten from Norway… and it didn’t matter at all.
Later at college and at work, I stood out as the girl with the unusual name!
My name is rare even in my own community, the Syrian Christians. We usually come across a few very elderly women with the name – so far I have met just one girl close to my age, at Cathedral & John Connon, with the same name. When I pressed my mom for its origin, she told me it was the Malayalam form of the name Susan.
Neither she – nor I – realized how wrong that theory was!
A few months ago I idly googled it – clicked on a result and was staggered to read on BabyNameFacts.com that it had a Hebrew origin…
Why did it come as such a shock? Because it only serves to bolster the theory that we Syrian Christians actually have our origins in in Middle East and have a Jewish connection from the time of Christ, 2000 years ago… and I had believed the St Thomas story was mere legend.
The fact is my name has survived unchanged these two millennia in a land very different from its origin, which is amazing. Take the Indian campaign of Alexander the Great – his name survives to this day in the North of India as Sikandar. A possible reason my name remains intact could be that it is short – only two syllables long – and did not lend itself to variations… then why did so many people get it wrong while I was growing up?!
Of course, I did browse some other sites and Jewish language groups to document that my name is truly of Hebrew origin. It is – and I probably am.
© Sosha Srinivasan
Dad had played billiards during his short service stint in the Navy and so it was only inevitable that he got hooked on snooker when we landed in Dar-es-Salaam. He’d disappear almost every evening to the Gymkhana Club. We sometimes accompanied him on weekends; we’d wander around the club, flipping through past issues of the now defunct Punch in the colonial-style reading room or watch squash or tennis matches in progress after a leisurely chicken curry and rice lunch. On Saturday nights the club showed movies on the terrace, but none of the celluloid offerings, not even Jaws or Bo Derek in 10, could drag Dad away from the green baize tables. As cues were not available in Dar-es-Salaam’s shops, Dad borrowed a spare one from a friend.
And so, a year later, during our vacation in India, Dad lost no time buying a wooden cue from Bombay. As we left for the airport to catch our flight back to Tanzania, Dad handed his precious cue to my brother, Jay, with instructions to be careful not to damage it in transit.
Our troubles began at Bombay Immigration & Customs. The officials stiffened when they saw the tapering wooden rod that was taller than a man. After eyeing us suspiciously and listening to Dad’s explanation, they examined it carefully and finally let us go after running it through a battery of metal detector and x-ray tests.
As we entered the aircraft, Jay had to perform a few acrobatic manoeuvers while trying to get the cue in safely. He succeeded – but in the process jabbed a hapless purser who tried to help most painfully in the stomach. The poor fellow let out an agonized “Oooof!” and had to be helped away. He spent most of the flight massaging his solar plexus.
Jay navigated the aisle safely, a duffel bag slung over his left shoulder and the cue in his right hand, but at his seat had to execute further contortions and almost gouged out the eye of the passenger seated behind him. The chap leapt up with a roar of rage and had to be placated by a couple of crew members. Meanwhile a passing air hostess got a sharp rap across the side of her head. She was quite nice about it and helped Jay lean it in a corner where it stayed harmlessly for the remainder of the flight. But the man behind Jay continued to mutter darkly under his breath and glared balefully every time he caught Jay’s eye. Dad, seated across the aisle, was quite oblivious to the drama, or rather pretended to be.
When the time came for disembarkation, three of the cabin crew rushed up to prevent any more bodily harm and frayed tempers. They took charge of the offending item and offloaded it safely, though I thought I saw one of them nursing his ribs.
At the Dar-es-Salaam International Airport, it was almost a replay of the scene at Bombay. One of the officials tried to unscrew the bottom and another examined it for microscopic joints. They eventually let us – and it – go after putting it through a metal detector.
Jay was understandably furious with Dad.
“Next time,” he said bitterly,”carry your own luggage!”
I sometimes wonder whether Geet Sethi and Pankaj Advani face similar problems when they travel by air.
© Sosha Srinivasan
Conceived in Kashmir in the far north, born in Kerala in the deep south, raised in Bombay (Mumbai) on the west coast and further west (Dar). Will I give up the ghost if, by some unfortunate chance, I happen to visit Calcutta (Kolkata) in the east? I haven’t visited that fair city yet… but I now live in Chennai, so I guess I’m inching closer…? Sounds like something out of a corny fantasy novel, don’t it?
Dad was a short-service commissioned officer with the Indian Navy “on loan” to the Army in Ladakh, supervising the convoys between Leh (definitely) and Pahalgam (I think). Mom joined him at Srinagar and thus began the story of my life.
Dad left the armed forces in 1966 to do an MBA at IIM-Ahmedabad. After a brief spell in N. Delhi, we settled in Bombay for the next decade, first living in Santa Cruz, then Bandra, at Nirmala Colony at the foot of Mount Mary and finally at Khushnuma Apartments on Cumballa Hill (off Peddar Road).
All in all an irregular Bharat darshan… I’ve heard of Americans making it a point to visit, in their lifetimes, every one of the 50 states in their country. I wonder how many Indians are trying to do the same in their motherland – 28 states and 7 union territories. I’ve passed on this idea to my son and he’s pretty enthusiastic since he has hardly traveled around except to Kerala and Andhra Pradesh.
© Sosha Srinivasan
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