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Thursday, June 20, 2019
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com MICHIGAN IN COLOR
My name: the color of gold
; the color of gold. In Bengali, my
mother tongue, pronounced: shoo-born-
ah. The name given to me by my parents,
recent immigrants to the Western Hemi-
sphere, lovingly gazing down at their first-
born child in this new world.
The color of gold. My memories of the
first three years of my life are backlit in a
warm light, created by the love of being
brought up in a household of doting par-
ents, grandparents and aunts. I was the
center of my little world, seeing everything
with innocence and curiosity.
The color of gold.
Pretty soon, I started
pre-school, where I
began to learn English,
surrounded by my Eng-
lish-speaking
teach-
ers and classmates for
hours at a time. There,
everyone
called
me
by the actual spelling
of my name, Subarna
(pronounced:
sooh-
barn-ah). As a toddler,
I obviously didn’t have
the mental capacity to
think anything about
this difference; it was
just an addition to my
life, something that I
went along with. Even
though I spent a good
deal of my day in pre-
school, I never truly
had fun until I came
home and played in
my backyard with my
grandfather watching
me in the warmth of
the afternoon, sunlight
peeking through the
leaves of his extensive
garden.
And so my life went
on, with me going
through my primary
education, and even-
tually middle school
and high school, all the while being known
as Shuborna (or my nickname, Mumu)
at home and Soobarna to the rest of the
world. This was never something I ques-
tioned, even when I was old enough to real-
ize that the English pronunciation did not
align with the way my language intended it
to. In fact, at one point I saw this as some-
thing to be happy about; I essentially had
two identities, something to clearly distin-
guish my two lives of home and school. I
didn’t let one part of my life into the other,
and my name made sure of that.
Sometime during the later stages of
high school, I remember telling some of
my Indian friends that the name they had
been calling me by for all these years, the
name that led to silly nicknames like “subs”
and “subie”, wasn’t the way my name was
meant to be. When I told them the actual
pronunciation of my name, they, for lack
of a better term, freaked the heck out.
Among many comments, one reaction that
remains in my mind is one of them saying
in an exasperated tone, “Shuborna? That
sounds SO weird.”
The comment left me feeling a bit
uncomfortable, but I didn’t really dissect
the interaction until later. Now, almost two
years later, here is my response.
No one else in this world besides my par-
ents and I, besides the ancient language of
Bangla itself, can deter-
mine what is and is not
an acceptable way to
pronounce my name. My
name belongs entirely
to myself and my long
line of ancestors who
have preserved the Ben-
gali culture through-
out centuries of good
times and bad, through
war
and
oppression
and colonialism, and
my name, , the
color of gold, reflects all
of these struggles; the
struggles of my seven-
year-old father fleeing
his village in the midst
of war, the struggles of
my mother as a newly
married bride in Cana-
da, separated by oceans
and
continents
from
her Mother India, the
struggles of my fam-
ily as they raised my
brother and I in a world
they had grown up only
reading about and see-
ing on television. My
name, , the color
of gold, is a testament
to the strength of my
family as every single
moment in every single
one of my ancestors’
lives has led to me being where I am today.
Today, in a place where the truth of my
name, its authenticity, the way it was plant-
ed on this earth, is reduced to “Shuborna?
That sounds SO weird”. A world where my
name, , the color of gold, has its light
dimmed by someone else’s own perception
of the world.
Since that experience, I’ve always been
wondering if there will ever be a time
when I can let my two lives eventually
merge into one. Now, after my first year
of college, I feel like that day is coming
closer and closer. Throughout the past
few months, I’ve found myself opening
PHOTO COURTESY OF ANURIMA KUMAR
up to the people around me more than
I ever did in high school, and I’ve been
struggling less and less with what people
think of me or how I look as I walk down
the street; as cliche as it sounds, college
has liberated my mind and my spirit,
bringing me closer, day by day, to accept-
ing myself. But the question that still
remains is, who actually is this “myself”,
this soul that is finally being unearthed
after digging through so may layers? Is
she Soobarna, the name I hear most often
throughout my day, or is she Shuborna,
the name I’m known by only in a small
fraction of my world? As I go on with my
life, as I make my mark on this world,
how do I want to be remembered?
I’d like to think that I want to be
remembered as the name that connects
me most directly to my roots, the name
that calls to mind the most captivating
ray of sunshine hitting the earth. In an
ideal world, I would have everyone call
me by my true pronunciation, Shubor-
na. But my logical side is constantly
nagging, pointing out all of the people
who, for almost nineteen years, have
called me by Soobarna; people who I
call my best friends, who I know will
continue to be in my life for years to
come. Is it fair to ask them to switch all
of a sudden?
While I was in the process of writ-
ing this piece, quite a few of my friends
on campus asked if they should call
me by the true pronunciation of my
name; at first, I leaned towards letting
them make the decision, saying some-
thing like, “only if you’re comfortable
switching”. But I realized that this goes
against everything that has been both-
ering me; the whole point is to empower
myself, to give myself control over the
way I present myself to the world. By
letting others choose the pronunciation
of my own name, I am continuing to
relinquish the power that I had already
been giving up for years, the power of
defining my position in this world.
All it takes is a simple correction:
“actually, my name is pronounced this
way.” It’s not that hard to do. Though
I still feel strange doing it, I know that
once that change has become universal,
the world will finally know me in my
purest, most golden form.
; the color of
gold. In Bengali,
my mother tongue,
pronounced: shoo-
born-ah. The
name given to me
by my parents,
recent immigrants
to the Western
Hemisphere,
lovingly gazing
down at their
firstborn child in
this new world.
SUBARNA BHATTACHARYA
MiC Contributor