malathi who?

Malathi Who?

Shakespeare raised
The compelling question
What is in a name?
So I thought
Until now.

A potent query pops in my head,
Who’s Malathi?

God bless the web of
Intriguing relationships among Indians!
Chinnamma, the little lady, at home
Peddamma at work, the supevisor,
Attamma for brother’s kids
Pinnamma for sister’s kids
And, ‘hey, you’, for whom,
The spelling is a mouthful.
Mom, mommy, MOTHER, on occasion,
And amma when annoyed
For my beloved daughter!

I fondly recall
The old German lady
Who took my chin in her palm
And asked, “Can I call you Melanie?’
“Of course,” I said.
I wanted her business
I would’ve flipped,
Had she snapped her fingers.

And then
The labels, of course.
“You are a feminist”
“No, I am not”
“Yes, you are”
“Why do you say so?”
“’Cause…”
“No, one ripple
Will not make waves”
“Ohh, come on…”
What a joke!

The good Lord knoweth I didn’t measure up
To somebody’s idea of feminism,
Wasn’t one of those
Dear darlings of Mother Telugu
‘Telugu talli muddubiddalu’
Or, I wouldn’t be in this mess,
In the first place!

A move I make
A philosophy I believe in
A principle I choose to live by
Sums me up and sets me apart.

In my country,
I used to say
“They call me malathi”
I am not Malathi
Just, they call me malathi
Like
The profile in AMW
A male Caucasian, 5 foot 6, brown eyes,
black hair, a tattoo or two.
A tag attaches to me
A bunch of syllables to mark a man, woman, or a thing.

Type in the keyword ‘malathi’
You will see four hundred hits on the screen,
Not counting the millions
who dodge the mouse
and beat the odds on the high-tech

Oh, yeah, the Finnish scholar.
His bibliography under Malathi Rao
A long, impressive list,
A few of my writings
And a lot more, not mine.

Wow, now I know
There is another Malathi Rao
Probably a decade or two younger,
Made the name famous!
“Are you the famous writer?”
“No Sir, the name is famous,
I am not!”

There IS something to a name,
I am somebody
In relation to others
OR
A speck of dust
Floating around
In the outer Space
Today
I am Malathi Rao
Tomorrow
Someone else could be so.

(© Malathi Nidadavolu, 2008)