Shakespeare has said, What’s in a name but if you go by Indian way of names then there is a lot in a name.
The names of these T shirts are written in Hindi. and they are Sabad Hari, Jey Sushil and Meenakshi
In the second week of the #threesomeisawesome series, We will be talking about How we zeroed in on the name of our new born and Why a name is important in our lives.
First week of the series #threesomeisawesome
This is series is about Mee, Jey and their new born child Sabad. #Threesomeisawesome is the extension of our last Online art project #IinTogetherness so we are calling this series as Togetherness is pass’e, Threesome is awesome.
The new born is named Sabad Hari and the story of naming him has its own twists and turns. In US we had to have a name before he was born and we were still not able to come up with a name. We just had one name in our mind and it was for a girl.
We thought it will be a girl and decided not to know the sex of the baby before it is born. In US you can know before the delivery unlike India where it is banned. We decided to keep it a surprise.
The name we had thought was Tara for a girl but the moment we knew that it was a boy, the frantic search for a boy’s name started. A discussion followed with two very close friends on whatsapp and calls with whom we had few chats about what if it is a boy.
Our spiritual guide told us to name the baby with letter S. We asked him to name him but he said, its your baby and you should decide it. We called the two friends and lot of suggestions came….one of them suggested in these words..’Jey…for me you are a man of words…so why not name him…Shabd…which means word.’
We liked the sound of Shabd but it is too sanskritised and we always wanted a simple name to pronounce. As we know lots of people in India have problems pronouncing S and Sh. Still we were almost in the final stages of naming him Shabd then suddenly the world SABAD came to mind which is almost similar to Shabd but has a lot deeper meaning than Shabd.
Sabad, we here mostly as the guruvani, the sabad-kirtan and kabir’s Sabad which means words in a prayer. We like the meaning and the simple sound of Sabad. A bit colloquial and interestingly different.
So the name Sabad got finalized. We thought of giving him our adopted names Jey but then decided against it because when if we were not giving him our caste name then why bother him with my adopted one.
So we try to found a word which can rhyme with Sabad and we zoomed on Narayan first…then Meenakshi suddenly said…Why not Hari which is also another name for Narayan. Sabad Hari…She said the full name and at that point it got final..
The first message went to the two dear friends about the name and came the reply. This couldn’t have been better than this. and thus the baby is named SABAD HARI…..(I realized later that my grandfather’s name is Hari-krishna)
The Jey couple
The name of Meenakshi and Sushil have their own stories.
Meenakshi was named Jaishree when she was born. later her maternal family requested to name her according to their wishes. The wish was granted and Meenakshi’s maternal family named her Meenakshi.
She hated the name as lot of people teased her as Meenakshi Sheshadri- a bollywood heroine. Later When Meenakshi was studying Indian history in College and started researching about her name, She came to know more and more about MEENAKSHI: The three breasted first warrior goddess of who fought with Sundereshwar and married him. The story is that Meenakshi was born with three breasts and it was said that when she will get married to the suitable candidate, her third breast will dissolve itself. Meenakshi was fierce and fought with gods and won all the battles till she found her match in SHIVA…The Sundereshwar.
I will not say that Jey is the Sundereshwara….because I have no story behind my name. I asked my parents a lot of time about why they named me Sushil and not something else and they had no answer so there is no such story.
Recently when I irritated my father about my name, he got so annoyed that the said, ‘actually you know I should have asked you…..’ after that I never asked him why they named me Sushil.
I will also not say Iam Sushil. My close friends says I am like my name but frankly speaking…I don’t know.
The name Jey came later and it was all because of social media. Those who want to know why I became Jey can read it here. https://artologue.in/why-i-became-jey/
Interesting!