There is a lot in a name, Sandeep Chakravorty

Bengalis and their nicknames- or ‘daak naam’ - have become part of folklore. But this tale is not about nicknames; it is about given names and surnames. Right from mychildhood itself, my family has never shared the same spelling for our surname. My father wrote it as “Chakravarty’’. My mother always signed herself off as “Chakraborty”, just like her parents; she didn’t bother to change the spelling from one Chakraborty gotra to another after marriage. Apparently, Chakravartys and Chakrabortys belong to two se[arate gotras -Vatsya and Shandilya respectively- so inter-marriage among them is allowed. Emulating our father, my siblings wrote Chakravarty as well, but my childhood desire to be different led me to change the spelling and write my surname as “Chakravorty”. Today, I have a family of Chakravortys, following the change I made many years ago. I am not the only one to write my name differently. There are others who write Chakraborti or Chakrabarti, while others write it as Chakraverty. I have come across some Chakravarthys and, Chakrawortys as well. I have even met the odd Chakravertty. And though our spellings may be different, we are all bound by the same meaning and pronunciation. 

In school in Shillong, I was taught to write my first name as “Sandip”. After moving to Delhi, however, I was introduced to the Delhi spelling, Sandeep. Seeing the strange way I spelled my name, my classmates mocked me, saying that I didn’t even know how to correctly spell my own name. To avoid any unnecessary name-calling, I changed the spelling of my name yet again and began writing my given name as Sandeep. And so, the complete spelling of my name became Sandeep Chakravorty and the 10th class matriculation certificate sealed it forever. 

For the class 10th examination, we were all requried to fill a form. In the form there was a column for the  grandfather’s name. My grandfather was called Annada Chakravarty, Annada deriving from Annadata–provider of food. My classmate Vishal who was sitting next to me read my grandfather’s name and started laughing out loud – that I couldn’t even write my grandfather’s name correctly.  “What is Annada, there is no such word, the correct name is Anand”, Vishal remarked aloud. We were all familiar with Anand, not with Annada. All the boys in the class started mocking the name of my grandfather. In embarrassment, I conceded that I had made a mistake, the correct name was Anand. So I filled in Anand as the name of my grandfather in the form. That evening at home, I made the folly of mentioning to my father – how I had changed the name of my grandfather while filling in a form at school. Hearing this, my father was appalled at my audacity. He exclaimed ruefully that he had heard son’s besmirching the name of their father’s, but his son had gone to the extent of not leaving alone his grandfather even, who himself was long gone from this world. 

Fast forward to the internet age. Some time in the early 2000s, curiosity about finding myself in cyberspace led me to searching my name on a search engine. I wanted to see if there were others like me who spelled both the given name and the surname similarly. Those were pre-Google times so I can't say that I “googled” myself, but using a good friend of those bygone days- Internet Explorer-, I was able to find four such compadres. One homonym was an eminent scientist in the US, with lots of research papers to his credit. The second worked in Crompton Greaves; the third was a software engineer in California; and the fourth was, of course, yours truly. Brimming with excitement, I couldn’t withhold the temptation to email all three. Surprisingly No. 2 and 3 responded quickly. We exchanged a few hotmails, but we couldn’t find much in common other than the rather tenuous denominational fact that we spelled our names the same way. Soon, and expectantly so, the exchanges stopped. 

In 2002, I was posted in our Embassy in Bogota, Colombia, working on pushing commercial ties with India. A delegation from Crompton Greaves had arrived during my time there. As you can already guess, amongst the delegation was none other than Sandeep Chakravorty. It was a strange meeting, delightful due to the coincidence  of the encounter but also awkward due to the formality that came with business interactions. I learnt that he knew my cousin Debashish Chakraborty, who also worked in Crompton Greaves in Africa. We, of course, discussed our Californian friend. Soon thereafter, I left Bogota for India but Sandeep of Crompton Greaves made several more trips to Latin America transiting through the US on his way to and from there. 

As luck would have it, a few years later, I once again bumped into him at a business event in Delhi. He then narrated his own appelative tale. This one time, he was transiting through Chicago’s O'Hare Airport where he stepped out for a smoke. Another gentleman approached him and asked him for a light, which he was happy to share. These two gentlemen started a conversation only to discover that both were talking to Sandeep Chakravorty. Immediately, and almost simultaneously, they asked each other if they knew the Indian diplomat of the same name. One is always amazed by coincidences but this was bordering on incredulity.

Now, fast forward to 2016. I was posted to Lima, Peru where I met with a compatriot from Asansol by the name of Rahul. The first thing Rahul told me was that he had a school friend from Asansol who spelt his name the same way as I did and worked in Crompton Greaves. He asked me if there was any chance I knew him. Of course, I did know Sandeep Chakravorty from Crompton Greaves, and I did narrate to him-in detail- a part of this story. 

In 2019, I was in New York, and Rahul from Peru came visiting. He invited me to dinner at his friend’s house  in Long Island. There weren’t too many others at the dinner except for the hosts and another person who had flown in from Chicago to meet Rahul. It was, of course, his school friend Sandeep. I couldn’t resist taking a photo with my Crompton Greaves homonym, who had now relocated to the US. Before writing this piece, I texted him and reminded him of the series of mind-boggling coincidences. As always, we enquired about the welfare of Sandeep number 3 who is reported to still be living in San Francisco, California.   

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