How scarring can names be? Ask Aurangzeb

How scarring can names be? Ask Aurangzeb

Mumbai: He laughs shyly at first and then uproariously. Almost doubling over, the cabbie mops his eyes with his sleeves, pointing to gigantic movie hoardings at the Mahim church signal. No, it isn’t an angry Arjun Kapoor staring at himself in a mirror that has him in splits; it is the film’s name — Aurangzeb. “Finally, I feel vindicated about my name after so many years,” he smiles. The 34-year-old resident of Behrampada in Bandra (E) explains that giving out his name — Aurangzeb Alamgir Mansoor Syed — to people has sent spasms of fear down his spine all through his life. “I was named by a pir in my native village in Jalgaon district, who told my parents that it meant ‘the pride of throne.’ My illiterate parents thought nothing of the name till I began going to school,” he adds. School years, especially classes IV and VI, were cruel. “We stayed at Chembur then. In school, the history books portrayed Aurangzeb as an anti-Hindu tyrant. Since most of my classmates and the teacher were Hindus, I was subjected to jibes in class and teasing during the breaks. This led to many nasty fights,” recalls Syed. The vilifying of Aurangzeb as one who vandalised temples, enforced the punitive jizya tax on Hindu pilgrims, imprisoned Shivaji, and tortured and killed his son, Sambhaji, had such a damaging effect several centuries later that the Mughal emperor’s namesake was forced to drop out of school in Class VII. “After the first round of riots in December 1992, our Hindu-majority locality became unsafe. We moved in with my maternal uncle’s family at Behrampada. Later, my father invested in a small kholi, where I still live.” It was during this break from schooling that Syed decided that he didn’t want to go back to the rigamarole of teasing and fighting at school. “I was determined not to let all of that happen again, and braved ammi’s shouting and abba’s thrashing to stay away from the local school they put me in.” After apprenticing at his uncle’s garage for a few years, he began driving a taxi. “I realised that I was not cut out to work for someone. Sure, the taxi-line has its own problems, but at least I’m on my own.” Afzal Khan knows what Syed feels like. The garment trader from a chawl in the Bandra-Kurla Complex shares his name with a medieval Indian commander who served the Adil Shahi dynasty of Bijapur and fought against Shivaji. “Perhaps, things wouldn’t have been this bad if I had just his first name or his surname. Put together, the name was devastating. I went through school cringing at barbs, many of which were communal,” says the Class XII dropout. “Each time I complained, I ended up being punished, along with those who teased me.” Khan, who hails from Aurangabad, changed many jobs and businesses before settling into garment retail. But the journey for Khan hasn’t been completely bitter. The memory of a particular incident associated with his name still cracks him up. He was working as a satellite van driver for a TV news channel during the communal flare-up in 1992 when Hindu organisations objected to an “encroachment by the Afzal Khan Trust at Pratapgad,” where the Bijapur general had battled Shivaji in 1659. “We were at the site with the reporter and the cameraperson. The Satara collectorate under which the Pratapgad fort falls was issuing security passes for mediapersons. A clerk took down our details. When he asked my name, he began smiling. But he almost fell off his chair laughing when he found out that the OB van engineer’s name was Shivaji Patil. ‘Ekdum Afzal Khan aani Shivaji jodiney aalat (So, Afzal Khan and Shivaji are travelling together),’ he’d laughed,” says Khan. Muslims alone are not faced with the name conundrum. Jaydev Singh Rathod, 30, a banker who lives in Borivli, remembers how elders in his Agnihotri Rajput family had baulked at his Tamil Brahmin wife Padma’s suggestion for a name for his firstborn. “She suggested Meera, thinking it’d have the right Rajput ring to it and would come across as an olive branch to my parents, who had bitterly opposed our marriage.” It was Rathod’s aunt who later explained that a name like Meera in their community is often the target of derision. “I learnt that it’s still used to disparagingly discipline young girls who show signs of an infatuation,” he points out. “Kyon ri bawli? Badi Meera ho gayi tu? (Are you crazy? Have you become Meera?) is a rebuke young girls often hear.” But the name still won hands down. “I have to deal with my folks only when I go to Udaipur. But I have to live with my wife. In the interest of peace at home, I went with her suggestion,” he smiles with a knowing wink.