Tell Me the Story of a Name
My maternal grandmother’s name was Andal (pronounced Aandaal with a ड). She was named after a revered saint poet, the only woman among the twelve Alvar saint poets. Andal’s passionate songs of love and devotion are sung or recited every morning during the month of Margazhi in December in Tamil Nadu.
Andal (my grandmother, not the saint poet:-)), was the eldest among three children. She was a bright student and an excellent volleyball player. She married my grandfather at the ripe old age of 15, considered a little late for matrimony in those days. It was common practice to change the names of women once they were married and Andal’s name was promptly changed to the much more ordinary sounding Lalitha. She accepted it, it was the lot of women to acquiesce silently and so she did, quietly and unwillingly. She found her voice many years later and boy it was something! My Paati (grandmother in Tamil) could be a loose cannon when she wanted to! There was the time she caught a thief in the kitchen and got him to confess at the police station and another time she refused to let a chain snatcher snatch her chain! She was an enthusiastic proponent of the smokeless chulha and often visited the homes of the people living in a basti nearby to help them install the chulhas. They called her Amma. We called her Lalitha Paati. Her side of the family refused to have anything to do with that name. They continued to call her Andal or the shortened version “Aandaa”. I loved how it rolled of their tongues, so warm, intimate, and full of love.
Lalitha Paati was the eldest daughter-in-law of the house so all the younger members of the family called her Manni (Bhabhi). My mother and her brother grew up hearing everyone call her Manni, so they never called her Amma, it was always Manni. My grandfather was called Babu at home, so instead of Amma and Appa my mother and my uncle called their parents “Babu-Manni”. I enjoyed explaining this complicated nomenclature to my friends. Most of them had similar stories to tell me about their family members.
Andal, Lalitha, Amma, Manni-one lifetime, so many names. We never asked her which name she preferred.
This article was written in response to a prompt given by the lovely folks at
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What a force of nature our grandmothers have been!
There’s no reason our upcoming grandkids shouldn’t be thinking the same when they browse the Substack accounts of their Paatis 😃❤️
Awww this is such a delightful piece.
It made me want to call my Paati, both of them, in fact, and take a leisurely stroll down memory lane 💖