The Birth and Death of a Joey

In the loving remembrance of Joey. 2022- 2022.

Joey walks into Leon, after being mesmerised by Lubaina Himid’s exhibition at Tate Modern. Joey does not order a Latte, Joey orders a double shot espresso with a splash of oat milk. Joey dies in a beautiful pink dress the second I jangle the ice cubes in the cup and toss it in a bin on my way back to Southwark. Perhaps I shall resurrect Joey again on another caffeine run. She was born that day and died on the same evening.

I was to be named from either a name that started with a delicate N or a softer T; the kind where your tongue barely touched the tip of your palette. Eventually, I was called Neha. My name, despite being one of the easiest to pronounce, is often wrung like a wet cloth, pronounced nee-ha and spelt niha. I do not take much offence to it. I can only attribute it to possible ambient sounds while I wait for my elaborately detailed coffee order. It is comical at times, I have been called Miha, Niha, Nina, Megha and I gave in unwillingly. Oh and, sometimes Starbucks deliberately misspells your name, so as you gaze at the cup your thumb swipes up to the bird app, and you tweet with attention '#starbucksnamefails’. It is a smart marketing strategy, gotta hand it to them.

Like Joey, a mysterious figure, far less charming, appears mostly at ethnic parties in our university. He identifies himself as Rajesh. If I could bottle his personality in a few words, it would be a stenchful hustle culture male byproduct. This ghostly stick is spotted in almost every ethnic situation with a red cup in his hand, while he trashes all the music that does not seem appealing to him. However, that’s not what it is striking about him. Rajesh chooses to exist doubly, to be accepted in the room full of Indians— to be seen, heard, and exist in doubles. He gives himself a very Indianised name, characterised by the quintessential middle-aged pot-bellied uncle aura. The thing is, Rajesh is a shapeshifting enigma; his words, tone, and behaviour all change when he is not Rajesh.

We did ask him why he calls himself so, the pitiful fact exists that his name is difficult to pronounce. His name that was accorded at birth is a tongue twister, it takes five or six tries to get it right. Ironically perhaps, after a drink or two when your words start slipping and have lost all rope-burn inducing control, you might be close to accurately pronouncing his name. And so, his officemates gave him this name. Which, I think, might have been done out of spite given his demeanour.

I know I must stop the Rajesh-bashing, but life has been tough lately, so my writing shall be the outlet. At times, I do wonder how he functions in such an arrangement of the plural selves; not born out of some psychological dilemma. If his other self, can encompass even a degree of who he is? My name is not something I hold close to my heart. I don’t exist in plural. There is one of me, identified and called by a solitary name. If you know me, you know my urge to go back in time and stop my grandfather from christening me and provide him with a list of names that I approve of. Names communicate a bit of you, something that remains alien to ourselves. Walter Benjamin writes in On the Language as Such and the Language of Man,

‘Therefore the linguistic being of man is to name things. As he is naming them, he communicates himself by naming them.’

My understanding of this sentence is still patchy but what little I make of it is that by naming there exists a dialogue between the object and the man. How sacred do you hold your name? How much of your name holds you? My name is not something I hold close to myself. Seeing it etched on pens, diaries, or even cases makes me immensely happy, despite it being stale on my eardrums. A reminder, that I have at one point used it. If it were a tangible object, I would sneer at it with disgust, crumple it into a ball of itself and shove it into a tiny corner of my drawer marked ‘important stuff: do not throw’. It is not something I hold dear at all, despite all the stories I have been told about it.

My grandfather (who I will keep making mentions of often in my writing for he is a dynamic person. I have only anecdotes in inheritance from him, and I don’t attach his name in vain, these are very genuine and authentic). He has two names for my mother, one of which is used for bureaucratic purposes. Those who are close or know my mother in a more personal manner know that she responds jubilantly when she is called Taniya. In his late 20s, when my grandfather came back from a work organised trip, he had seen the world for the lack of a better word. He christened his daughter Taniya, derived from Tatania which means fairy queen. The name given to her at birth is an arduous tongue exercise with an oddly placed ‘r’ between a striking consonant and undulating vowel. However, the meaning of her name encompasses the entire universe, for it is named after it. But for a fact, I know she attached more of herself to the name given to her by my grandfather. My sister is blessed with a pet name too and has two names attached to herself. However, her being is more intrinsic to her birth name. Her friends, who are still in their adolescence, choose to call her by her birth name. Occasionally we still call her gungun— pronounced as goon-goon, which translates to one who is warm and soft.

Not all name-calling, name giving, or re-naming is born out of saccharine filial belonging, capitalistic redemption or romantic proclamation. Every so often, it is born out of weariness weighing on shoulders in coffee shops, or amid small talks and the establishment of first impressions. The student accommodation I live in is primarily dominated by Asians. My flat is occupied by an Indian (me), an American, Three Chinese, and a Taiwanese Student. I was accorded one solitary name. My Asian flatmates on the other hand have two names. It is impossible for me to associate them with any other names. They all have two names, with which we are supposed to summon them. Jack, Zack, Winnie, and Tina. All of which are fairly different from their birth names.

For the entirety of the year, I am only going to be able to know their more formal selves, the way you sit in front of a pastry that was once a cake. Adding the language barrier that proudly stands between us like an opaque windshield through, we all just see each other in the kitchen in passing, and the conversations can never be pushed beyond asking how are you doing. I tried pronouncing Zach’s name, but after a few tries, he shrugged and smiled.

It is easier to call me Zach.

He mostly stays in his room. On a Sunday morning, he gently let me know in a broken sentence that it is his birthday. Part of me felt it was owed to the bubbles of formality we all were forced to live in because sometimes not taking an effort is easier and less embarrassing than realising how different you are. While Zach decides to be confined to his room on his 26th birthday, Xhiyuan’s 25th Birthday was celebrated with a devil’s chocolate cake amongst those who knew and love him. I wonder how will Zach celebrate his 27th birthday?

When Jack spoke to Winnie in the kitchen, I sat there, silently watching them interact for the first time. I could not understand their exchange, but it seemed to make Winnie a little frazzled. A friend said we would never know them. It would be in this inaccessibility that they would exist doubly. Jack, whose birth name is Cheng, will only be visible to us in unfulfilling proportions. Cheng has a heavy voice, his hello is reverberant when I meet him in the hallway. And his eyes crease pleasingly above the mask when he meets any of us. I am curious, how do they get these names? Who gave them these names? Has it been so since childhood, or was it reluctantly acquired suddenly in adulthood?

Literature has had significant sightings of such re-naming. Jean Rhys wrote a prequel to Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre. The feral wife, Bertha, is given a gratifying but dark history. It could be speculated that this renaming, which comes in the form of annihilation could be inspired by Rhys’ own experiences. In Wide Sargasso Sea, Rhys humanises her tragic damsel and calls her, Antoinette. Marxist feminist Gayatri Chakraborty Spivak associates this manner of renaming with embezzling of parental authority. I wonder what she would have to say about my countless coffee grabbing personas.

For Rhys, Reality was often purloined by fiction. Ella Gwendolyn Rees Williams was born to a Welsh doctor and European-Creole descendent. Frequently she was shamed for being of mixed race, called a white cockroach in childhood. In her adulthood, under the mentorship of Ford Madox Ford, she altered her personage to a ‘comparatively modern’ one as how we know of her today, Jean Rhys. Ford and Rhys shared a brief romantic affair, tricklings of which are depicted in her work Quartet. Angered by this description, Ford’s semi-fictional outcry in the form of a short story named When the Wicked Man talks about a Lola Porter. Rhys shapes Lola Porter (according to Ford)— an alcoholic deranged nymphette. But the question remains, how much of Lola did Jean hold? How much of Rhys did Porter hold?

The question remains if Joey will ever be born again. I do know that niha shall keep finding more lives than a cat.

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A little update: I sat for my last MA classes this week. It has been a little hectic and emotional because it was not so emotional. Hence, it took me a while to send this out but perfunctory is not in my MO. The last time I sat for the last of anything, was back in March 2020. It was marked with such bittersweet sadness and perplexion that we savoured every moment. Note to self: Not all goodbyes are to be cherished.