“Akki, it’s time to have lunch, stop playing and bring Malli to the table.”
Pause.
“Thaaththi come and eat, we are all waiting no…”

Why is it that perfectly sensible people have a child or two and instantly start using childish names between themselves? Parents seem to love calling their partners as well their kids by whichever name their infants have managed to master. Thus, one frequently overhears adults calling each other Ammi and Appa or Mama and Dadda or whatever, while the children’s pet names are fixed by the time they are able to lisp – Sonna, Darla, Malla, Girlie, Nangi, Nanga, Punchi, Puncha, Thanga and Thambi and some others that are too cringe-worthy to write down here. Everyone grows older but you never get to outgrow your pet name however awful. So you spend half your adult life using a 2 year old’s name at home and with your extended family as well.

So what’s the point of all those carefully planned christenings and naming rituals on which so much time and anxiety is spent, in order to pick the right name with the right sound and the right vowel sound? (How about the family tradition to start everyone’s name with a P? Prasad marries Pushpa and their offspring will be Premali, Prasanna and Pubudu. Or the other one where each child’s name is an anagram of their parents’? There’s lots of ghastly methods to use….)

What a waste of all those heated arguments over whose grandfather’s second name will do for young Malla? Or the weekly discussions about the wisdom of choosing the name of the heroine of the last fantasy novel we read just before Nangi was born? (Sabine, Lyanna, Tasha, Leia…) and will it be nice next to Thanuja, Susanthika or Ayanthi?

What’s the point when they’re never going to be called any of it?

They’re just going to be Malla and Nangi until they have kids and then they’ll be Amma and Thaththa and that’s it. Arrested forever at 2.