THE ATONEMENT - A CELEBRATION OF WOMEN

CHAPTER ONE

My name is Jas Jabrul Jhasker Jhar Jabuza. Before you start tweaking your eyebrows, please allow me to explain: it is not the first nor will it be the last time. I solemnly agree it is a strange name, and I have never met another soul with such an embarrassingly long and awkward name in life. It is a very long story but let me make it brief. "Jas" was the name given by my father: it means luck in our dialect and he always called me by that name. "Jabrul" was the name I got from my mother; it literally means nothing but she invented the word and always called me by that name with pride and happiness as if she actually owned it. "Jhasker" was the name I inherited from my grandfather, which also had no particular meaning, but he simply liked it, and always used that name to address me with sheer affection. "Jhar" was the name of our village, and our family had a sacred tradition of carrying it with our name. As I hailed from the same family that was the actual founder of the village, I had to carry that name as well. "Jabuja" is simply our family's surname, and it had no other meaning. Needless to say, my long name did create a plethora of confusion in our household, and pretty annoying situations during my childhood. Guests or outsiders in our home, who were new and unfamiliar with our awkward naming phenomena, got easily confused, not knowing which one to use, especially when I happened to be the only child at home during those particular moments. That confusion started to morph into pressing problems when I started school, and kids began calling me various names intentionally in order to tease me. Not only was I embarrassed, I was genuinely annoyed and upset.

In addition to the five names that I already had, children from the school as well as from my neighborhood used to call me names like JJ, JJJ, five Js, multi-Js, the big J, and so on as if it were some sort of name-calling competition. It was pretty imaginative in a weird way; nevertheless I hated them for the name-calling. I couldn't imagine myself associating with any of them, and whenever I found myself in this situation, I wanted to run away. But it was not possible to run away forever, my peculiar problem kept on following me, and it was gradually becoming a serious dilemma in my young and inexperienced life. It drastically upended my innocent years, deprived me of my otherwise unrestrained happiness, and I was compelled to spend my precious childhood in unnecessary worry and agitation. There were days when I desperately sought for excuses to avoid school. More often than not I failed miserably, which aggravated the situation even more. I felt helpless, but my ordeal was not over and it was seriously affecting my wellbeing. If I were to survive the very first test of this cruel thing called life, sooner or later, I had to find a way out as a winner. Time was starting to tick faster, the pressure was on, and I was in a real hurry to win the first race of my young life. I had never been so serious and I was really determined. Under the patina of sheer determination, I was genuinely scared too. Yet, I didn't let my fear overshadow the importance of my struggle that I had to overcome one way or another, and that somehow lifted my spirits and doubled my encouragement. I was finally ready.

My first tangible solution to solve my pressing problem was pretty simple. I personally believed it to be pretty awesome, at least at that period of my life when I was in a real hurry. As per my brilliant plan, I chose the name I liked the most among all of them, and told everyone I saw or met for the next few weeks about my new name and asked them to call me that name only from now on. Before anyone, including my family, could call me with a different name, I would remind them of my new name, and request them to always call me only with that new name. After much perseverance on my part, people from my village and school were finally starting to call me with that chosen name. Although it had taken more time and patience than I had ever anticipated, I was genuinely delighted that it had paid off. Within about six months, each and every one from my neighborhood, village and school started to call me with only one name, my incessant teasing with multiple names was finally over, and I never had to deal with that embarrassing issue again in life. Yet, there were still three people who ignored my plea and never stopped calling me with three different names until the last moment of their lives: my father, mother and my grandfather. The name I had chosen for life was JJ. It was not only easier to pronounce and sounded cool, I really liked it. I was just eight years old at the time. The story that follows is JJ's story, in other words, my own story.