Chapter 6: Hello Netta Wilde — Naya Naam (New Name)

The name came from Kiara. Not deliberately — Kiara did not know she was naming anything. Kiara was eating dal-rice at the community kitchen on a Thursday and talking about the fake IDs she'd had as a teenager (the fake IDs being the particular survival skill of homeless teenagers in Pune: the IDs that got you into the 24-hour McDonald's without questions, the IDs that said you were twenty-one when you were sixteen, the IDs that were not for drinking or clubs but for the basic infrastructure of existing — a phone SIM, a hostel bed, the things that required proof of identity from people whose identity was the thing they were trying to escape).

"Maine ek baar apna naam badal diya tha," Kiara said, between mouthfuls. "Ek saal tak main Riya thi. Riya Sharma. Poora naya aadmi." I changed my name once. For a year I was Riya. Riya Sharma. A completely new person.

"Aur phir?" Ananya asked. And then?

"Phir wapas aa gayi. Riya boring thi." Kiara grinned — the grin of an eighteen-year-old who had survived things that fifty-year-olds had not encountered, the grin being the armour. Then I came back. Riya was boring.

The conversation happened on Ananya's sixth Thursday at the community kitchen. Six Thursdays being the duration after which the kitchen had shifted from volunteering to identity — the identity being: Ananya was now "the dal didi," the title given by the regulars, the title that Ananya had resisted initially (the resisting being the corporate woman's discomfort with being defined by a ladle rather than a job title) and then accepted and then, quietly, cherished. The cherishing being: when the regulars said "dal didi," they were naming a relationship, not a function, and the relationship was the thing that the corporate title had never provided.

But the name. The name came later that evening, on the bus home — the 154 from Hadapsar to Kothrud, the bus whose route had become Ananya's Thursday commute, the commute replacing the Senapati Bapat Road commute with its air-conditioned car and its parking-lot politics. The 154 was not air-conditioned. The 154 smelled of diesel and sweat and the particular Pune bus smell that was the combination of every passenger's day compressed into a shared metal tube. Ananya sat by the window (the window seat being the bus's luxury — the luxury of air, even if the air was Pune traffic air, the traffic air being a combination of auto-rickshaw exhaust and the jasmine garlands that the flower-sellers at Swargate draped over their carts).

She was thinking about Kiara's fake name. About being someone else. About the particular freedom of a name that was not attached to history — not attached to Karan's diminishment, not attached to the corporate identity that had been the armour for twenty-two years and that the armour had been removed and the removal had left Ananya exposed and the exposure was the condition.

Ananya Grover. The name that carried: wife-of-Karan, employee-of-Grover-&-Mehta, mother-of-children-who-chose-the-other-house. Every syllable loaded with the history of a life that had been defined by others. The Grover being Karan's name (taken at marriage, the taking being the Indian tradition that Ananya had not questioned at twenty-five and that at fifty she questioned daily). The Ananya being the name her parents gave her (the name meaning "unique," the uniqueness being the aspiration that parents encoded in names and that the encoding was the parents' prayer and the prayer was: be different, be yourself, the yourself being the thing that twenty years with Karan had eroded).

On the bus, between Swargate and Deccan, Ananya took out her phone. She opened a new note. She typed: "Naya Naam."

Not a legal change. Not an official anything. A private experiment. A name that she would use — where? She didn't know yet. At the community kitchen? Online? In the mirror? The where was not the point. The point was the naming. The point was: the woman who had been defined by others' names (Karan's wife, Mahesh's employee, Liza-and-Vivek's mother) would define herself. The defining being the rebellion that did not look like rebellion — the quiet rebellion of a fifty-year-old woman on a city bus typing a new name into her phone.

She tried names. Discarded them. Ananya Sharma — too generic, the Sharma being India's default surname, the default being anonymity rather than identity. Ananya Devi — too much, the Devi carrying the weight of divinity and Ananya was not feeling divine, Ananya was feeling human, specifically and painfully human. Ananya Joshi — her maiden name, the name before Karan, but the before-Karan name carried the before-Karan person and the before-Karan person was twenty-five and naive and the naivety was not something to return to.

Then: Netta. The word arriving from nowhere — or from everywhere. Netta. Which was not a Hindi word or a Marathi word but which sounded like one. Netta. Which sounded like neta — leader. Which sounded like niti — policy, principle. Which sounded like the beginning of something. Netta. Netta Joshi. Netta Wilde.

Wilde. The English word that meant: untamed, uncontrolled, the opposite of what Karan had demanded. Wild. Wilde with an 'e' — the literary Wilde, the Oscar Wilde, the Wilde that Farhan would appreciate. Netta Wilde.

She typed it. Looked at it. The phone screen glowing in the bus's evening dimness, the dimness being the 154's standard lighting — fluorescent tubes, two out of five functioning, the functioning-two casting the particular yellow-green light that Indian public transport provided, the light that made everyone look slightly ill but that also, in its dimness, provided a privacy that the bright corporate office never had.

Netta Wilde. The name that was nobody's wife and nobody's employee and nobody's mother. The name that was: new. The name that was the experiment.

She did not tell anyone. Not Nikhil (who would have approved but whose approving would have made it a thing and the making-it-a-thing would have added weight and the weight was not what the name needed; the name needed to be light, experimental, a trial). Not Farhan (who would have quoted Oscar Wilde and the quoting would have been delightful but the delight would have formalised the name and the formalising was premature). Not Kiara (who had inspired the name and who would have understood the name because Kiara had been Riya for a year and the being-Riya was the same impulse: escape through renaming, the renaming being the poor woman's plastic surgery — you could not change the face but you could change the word that preceded the face and the changing was its own transformation).

She told the mirror. At home, in the bathroom of the Kothrud flat — the bathroom that was the flat's smallest room and that was, therefore, the room where privacy was absolute. The mirror that was mounted above the sink and that reflected: a fifty-year-old woman with silver at the temples (the silver that she had started dyeing and then stopped, the stopping being the particular decision of the post-divorce woman: stop hiding the evidence of time, the evidence being the authenticity that the marriage had not permitted). The woman in the mirror who had been Ananya Grover for fifty years and who was now — experimentally, provisionally, in the privacy of a Kothrud bathroom — Netta Wilde.

"Hi," she said to the mirror. "Main Netta hoon."

The mirror did not respond. Mirrors did not respond. But the woman in the mirror smiled. The smile that was not the corporate smile (the smile that covered) and not the Diwali party smile (the smile that performed) but the private smile, the smile that occurred when the person smiling was smiling for no audience, the no-audience smile being the most honest smile and the honesty being: this is absurd, this is a fifty-year-old woman talking to a mirror, and the absurdity is the freedom.

"Netta Wilde," she said again. The bathroom tiles echoed slightly — the slight echo of a small tiled space, the echo being the only applause.

She brushed her teeth. The toothpaste was Colgate — the red Colgate, the Colgate that her parents had used and that Ananya had used and that the using was the continuity, the one thing that had not changed in fifty years: the toothpaste. She spat, rinsed, looked at the mirror again.

"Goodnight, Netta."

She went to bed. She slept. For the first time in weeks, she slept without waking at 3 AM (the 3 AM being the redundancy's time — the time when the mind replayed the firing, the time when the body remembered the desk being cleared, the time that insomnia claimed as its territory). She slept, and in the morning she was Ananya again (the Ananya who made chai and walked to the park and sat on Farhan's bench and discussed Premchand). But somewhere underneath the Ananya, the Netta existed — the experiment, the possibility, the name that was the seed of the person she might become.

The seed did not need water yet. The seed needed only: to exist. The existing was enough. For now.