My Name

You write my name on the wet window pane that’s been washed with the first monsoon shower. You trace the letters softly, looping the g and the r with flair, but conveniently forgetting to dot the i. The glass smiles through the slant of your scribble, and I can glimpse the busy street through the transparent letters.

You write my name on the blank pages of your journal, absent mindedly, as you pause to recollect and reflect on the happenings of the day. I am grateful for the space my name occupies, page after page, thought after thought, doodle after doodle.

You carve my initials on the frosty Borosil glass, as the ice cold water condenses outside.

You do not spare the dusty car too. Your fingers float, moving and stopping alternately, until my name proudly appears on the front, back and the side glasses.

The beige, peachy, golden sand on the beach knows what I am called. Every weekend, you dutifully remind her of the six letters that make up my name, imprinting them, if only momentarily, just in the lap of the ocean.

Your FaceBook password is twenty four months old. My name is typed scores of times in a single day, whenever you log in to the social network.

I often wonder what goes through your mind when you do that. I wonder what my name means to you. I wonder what I mean to you!

A hundred times I ask myself why my name finds itself resting on every surface your fingers touch. A hundred times I question the injustice of it all.

The wet window pane will be wiped away, along with my name. 

The blank pages of your journal will be filled in royal blue ink when your ideas have found words. My name will be lost, in the loops and curves and knots of your handwriting.

The Borosil glass will have to be washed. My name and the memory of it will be history.

The dusty car will have to be dusted. Reluctantly, I will clean the front, the back and the side glasses, stripping the vehicle bare of my identity.

The sand on the beach will give in to the pressure of the high tide. The ocean will hungrily swallow the tracing of my name. The sand will forget, once more, that I exist.

The keyboard will be busier checking up on your friends, once you have logged in to Face Book. You will be thinking of plans and parties and meetings and get-togethers and celebrations and I would not be a part of those thoughts.

I wonder why. A hundred times a day, I wonder. A hundred times, the very same question. A hundred times, no answer.

Perhaps I have become a habitual presence in your life, woven inextricably into your days and nights. My presence is like that of the air you breathe, necessary, but rarely noticed. My name is routine. The love that once punctuated these six letters has faded.

But sometimes, when you come back home and smile and whisper my name with faint strains of affection and longing and happiness and a slight playful amusement in your voice, I realize my name is special. In those moments, the love sparkles again. In those moments, I know that there is a reason why my name means so much to you. In those moments, I know, I still mean so much to you! And I know, there is still a place where my name is inscribed permanently. I know that as long as you are alive, and even after I am not, my name will stay, forever, imprinted in your heart. And in those moments, knowing this is enough.