On Saturday afternoon, I realized I did not know my Dadu’s name, the one on Baba’s side. I knew my Amma’s name, Maya, but drew a blank for Dadu, so I texted my father asking. He misspelled his own father’s name twice before getting it right: Hemendranarayan Chakrabarti.
I went my whole life without knowing this information. I learned it only a month before he died.
The name on Baba’s first Visa was Himadri None Chakrabarti. On the line where they requested a middle name, he wrote “none.” We laugh about it. They got his birthday wrong too. Before I understood the difference between the paper self and the corporeal self, Ma had to shush me at the pharmacy when they asked for Baba’s birthday and she gave them a date different from when we celebrated it.
Baba named me Monmita. He wanted me to have a long, beautiful name. The literal translation of my name is “mind friend,” but the meaning Baba intended was “soulmate.” Baba’s first name translates to “snow mountain,” but it means “snowy peak of a mountain.” The Himalayas specifically. The closest mountain range to the place where he grew up, the home we visit when we go to India, where I used to see my Dadu and kneel at his feet and kiss his forehead.
The translation of “Chakrabarti” is “wheels rolling.” The meaning is “land owning Brahmin.” In the actual meaning, there is violence. In translation, this history of oppression is lost.
Everything I know about my family is an imperfect interpretation.
When I went to CVS to pick up my birth control, the pharmacist asked me to say my full name, then spell it out, then spell out the first three letters of my first name. My cheeks flushed and I was hyperaware of the person waiting behind me. I rushed through the letters like they meant nothing.
Few people I love can pronounce my name correctly. I coo Bangla to my cat so I know I still can, so it doesn't slip away from me, but I think in English and I speak it to my parents over the phone. It’s not my first language, but it’s the easy one, the path of least resistance. More and more often, speaking Bangla makes me tired. It makes me think.
Of course, these are experiences you have to squint to see. The bigger things float like stock images through my head: colonization, climate crisis, capitalism, war. Words that lose their meaning.
I know my great grandfather on Ma’s side had a book of names, the family tree. It was lost when his family was forced out of Bangladesh. They left everything behind, including history. The past is fuzzy and unclear, filled with missing names.
Every act of translation is nearsighted. I can only see directly ahead of me.
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