by any other name- reflection

When she was first given the name "Cynthia" by the headmistress, Santha Rama Rau said in her memoir, By Any Other Name, that, "At that age, if one's name is changed, one develops a curious form of dual personality." She further explained, saying, "I remember having a certain detached and disbelieving concern in the actions of "Cynthia," but certainly no responsibility." She did not feel necessarily emotionally connected to her "British" counterpart, and felt as if they were two different beings altogether. In fact, throughout the story, she seemed to be very proud of her identity as an Indian. For example, instead of wearing cotton dresses like the other students, even the Indians, were wearing, Santha continued to wear Indian clothes to school. 

At the end of her memoir she said, "But I put it happily away, because it had all happened to a girl called Cynthia, and I was never really particularly interested in her." By saying this, she wanted to portray that even to the end she still felt like she was not connected to Cynthia, and therefore felt like the whole issue of being treated differently for her ethnicity did not bother her much. 

However, I am not very convinced of this sentence about how she had put the memory away. The reality of the statement is that although it may not have affected her much at the time, it had stayed in her memory until now. This is proven by the fact that she wrote the memoir about this event. The memoir as a whole was centered around this occurrence that was seemingly insignificant at the time. But it can be seen from the fact that she wrote an entire memoir on this one little issue from her early childhood that it actually did have a big impact on her life afterwards. If it had been something that she put "happily away", then she probably would have remembered it and would not have written a memoir about it. 

a rose by any other name...

In Shakespeare's well-known play Romeo and Juliet, one of the lines that portrays the central message of the play and all of the struggles that the two characters go through is: 

"What's in a name? that which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet;

So Rome would, were he not Romeo call'd,

Retain that dear perfection which he owes

Without that title. (II.ii.47-51)

Juliet was saying that a name is something that has no meaning at all, and that she loves “Montague”, but not the actual name or the family, but Romeo as a person. What this quote means is that what matters is what something is, not necessarily what it is called, and that its name will not change its nature or characteristics. Likewise, a rose can be called another name, but it will still have the same smell as when it was referred to as a “rose.”

I agree with Shakespeare. A name is not everything that something is. Although it is true that if something’s name changes, your perception of it changes, that something itself will not necessarily change. For example, if roses were called “stinkbuds”, even though you would perceive them differently, they would still smell the same as roses. Likewise, in the case of brand names, sometimes we perceive goods that are from famous brand as being better than ones from we have never heard of. In that case, despite the fact that we are judging it based on its name, and we may perceive the two similar goods differently, they are, all in all, the same thing.

Also, even in cases where people legally change their names because they dislike their given names, the people themselves are not the ones that change; only their title or label changes. It is true that one’s identity may be linked to one’s name, but one’s name is not the only thing that composes one’s identity.

irb #1- eat pray love

For my IRB memoir, I decided to read Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. It is her story of how she went from being an unhappy married woman to getting divorced from her husband and traveling to find true happiness. She leaves all of her troubles and confusion behind in New York and spends a year abroad, spending four months each in three different countries. In Italy she learns about pleasure, in India she examines her aspect of devotion, and lastly, in Bali, she finds out about the balance between worldly and religious enjoyment. 

What has interested me until now is her progress from being a woman suffering from depression and ending up crying until 3am every night, into someone who is free from burden and travels around the world discovering her true self. Also, her choice of the three countries she visits and the three aspects she wants to discover about herself interested me, because she seemed to be very determined to really learn about who she is as a person.

So far, in the book, she has described some of the events of the past few years that caused her to become so eager to travel around the world experiencing new cultures. She explains about the situation with her husband, as well as the confusion she feels about David, and more importantly, she shares a lot about her characteristics and the story of how she first began to pray. I am now on chapter 26, or as she calls it, the 26th bead, in the novel out of the total 108 beads. Up to this point, she has left New York and is now in Italy, learning Italian, a language she had always wanted to learn, and eating delicious foods.

One topic I would like to further develop is the aspect of how the author believes that her three journeys will help her. She explained very thoroughly why she began her year overseas in the first place, but she didn't specify as to how she thought this would help her with the panic and depression she was feeling when she was in New York.