‘Ash’ is not my ‘white name,’ I swear!

Much ado about three letters that run soul-deep…

By Ashwini Gangal

Few days ago, I responded to an email, getting back to a book publicist in New York City with my address so that she could dash off a galley to me next month.

“Dear Cindy,” it began.

When I was done, I signed off with my customary “Best wishes, Ash”

Few minutes later, I wrote another email, this time to the editor of a local magazine that amplifies the voice of Indians in the Bay Area. I wanted to pitch a story idea for their upcoming issue — could I profile a girl from Chandigarh who became a cop in California soon after getting a Green Card?

“Hi Saumya” was the salutation. I ended it with, “Best wishes, Ashwini”

It’s the same pattern when I visit local eateries; on a Starbucks coffee cup I’m Ash, in thick black ink no less, but at the friendly neighborhood idli place in Sunnyvale, I’m Ashwini, the eponymous mare who galloped through the pages of the Puranas all the way to the first nakshatra in the night sky.

Decisions of how I choose to self-identify are subconscious. Even so, there’s no doubt, I am playing mind games. When speaking with Americans who’re not in any way rooted in South Asia, I call myself Ash. But I use my full name Ashwini when the person at the other end is Indian or of Indian or South Asian origin.

I do this not because I’m simplifying my name for Americans who’re quite likely to mispronounce it, like a lot of my immigrant brethren do after a few failed attempts. We’re all familiar with the “No, it’s Harsh, not harsh” routine.

Instead, I do this because I don’t want my fellow desis from the diaspora to think I’m a wannabe! If I call myself Ash while speaking or writing to an Indian in America, I worry they’ll think I’m trying to sound fancy by Americanizing my very Indian name.

So while I am guilty of posturing, it’s not what it looks like. Ash is not my “white name,” like “Harvey” for Harvinder might be. It is but an alter ego born in my teens on a school playground in Mumbai where I’m from.

Few weeks ago, a fellow Indian befriended me on the BART and we got talking. He was also from Mumbai, so you can imagine the common ground we found as we rode from Milpitas to San Francisco.

“I’m Tuhin” he said.

“Ah, nice to meet you, Tuhin. Is that a bohri name? Oh lovely, you know my best friend is also bohri. I’m Ash by the way…”

Oops.

“Um… what’s your actual name?” he challenged.

“Okay, Ash is short for Ashwini,” I said.

He didn’t have to say it but writ large on his face were the words “So Ash is what you call yourself in America, eh?”

“My friends back home call me Ash!” I defended.

“Oh,” said Tuhin. “So you’re cool…”

We laughed and moved on to discussing politics, but the conversation bothered me and I’ve been turning it around in my head since. This essay is my way of scratching that mental itch.

I empathize with Indians who abbreviate their names after coming to the U.S., mercilessly amputating elements of their identity in the process. Not just Indians, actually. People of East Asian descent often have short, crisp, Western names that don’t resemble their real, often lengthy, names at all. I see how Padmanabhan Chandrasekhar becomes Paddy C.S., but am quite amused when Zhixin Hong Guangcheng becomes Mary. But still, I empathize.

My relatives who migrated to the East Coast in the 1980s called themselves Pax and Sam for nearly a decade before finally coming out in their primarily white social and professional circles as Padmalaxmi and Samarthanarayan. That’s how long it took for them to shed their immigrant diffidence, subvert the rules of assimilation and reclaim their real selves from the Americanized versions they’d created solely for the benefit of colleagues and friends whose tongues rolled a different way.

For many, it’s not about judgment at all, but simply about preventing people from butchering their names. “We want to name her something short and simple, something people here will be able to pronounce without ruining it!” said an acquaintance who’d just given birth to a baby girl. They let go of Suhasini and settled for Simi instead.

Then there are others who insert pronunciation keys on their websites and visiting cards. Like, Uh-Dee-Tee for Aditi or Shuh-run-yuh for Sharanya. I find this practice both funny and endearing, and I almost always try saying them out loud to see if it matches or if I could’ve come up with a better cue.

Recently, at a social event, I met a retired high school teacher, who, originally from Rajasthan, has spent the last 30 years in California. Between bites of samosa, she gave me an earful for introducing myself as Ash to people here. “You should insist on people calling you Ashwini,” she said. “It’s what I used to tell my students too — no short forms!”

I understand her sentiment. Our name is, after all, an anchor for our personality, our sense of self, our individuality. For Indians who live outside India, the humble first-name becomes a symbol of our culture, our native language and our homeland. If we’re so fussed about our pronouns, surely our proper nouns must mean a great deal more.

But nevertheless, I insist I was Ash before I got here. My friends back in India took the first three letters of my name and nicknamed me thus. It began as a show of affection, apnapan and yaari-dosti. Now it has morphed into a sort of declaration of being sweet and kind. The subtext for “Hi, I’m Ash” really is “Hi, I’m affable and approachable... just ask my friends.”

So while I am proud of my beautiful given name, I refuse to concede that its short version is my white name. On the contrary, it represents modern, urban, global India — and it’s undoubtedly brown in color.

The author is a Mumbai-bred, California-based journalist, hopelessly in love with the written word.