My name is my mother's call for warm aloo-parathas from the kitchen, her reminder to always be careful but never be scared, it is her hope for all the things she once wanted to achieve.
My name is my father's pride and his disappointment. It is the keyboard I wanted for my birthday that he saved up his salary for and the labels on dusty covers of engineering guides he sold away with newspapers as I packed my bags to leave for Delhi.
My name is a print on the back of a basketball jersey I no longer wear. It is on the first pages of novels that someone, somewhere would've picked up from a thrift store at the airport. My name is a missed call on a certain someone's phone who would've once barely gone a day without talking.
My name is my sister's "dhappa" during hide and seek and my Dadi's search party for the tv remote. My name is something my grandfather remembered after Alzhimer's made him forget his own.
Listen, I don't know who I am. Some nights, my name is a war-cry, a fight against shivering hands and sleep music that doesn't help. My name is an accumulation of things I fail to voice, it is my angriest poem and my most timid apology. My name is the credit I feel I am seldom given.
I don't know who I am. But on days that someone enunciates my name, those six letters and two syllables with softness, I feel like I do more than just exist. When you choose to say my name with love, I choose to live.
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