The Namkaran Sanskara: Naming Ceremony

My devar reads English, and for twelve years that made him the person who explained things to me inside my own house. The naming report was in Hindi and I read it at the kitchen table before he was back from work. When he asked which day, I told him the day and I told him the reason.

My wife's parents had landed from Anand four days before and mine were getting on a plane the same week. So the naming had to be an hour three sets of people could actually reach. It came back as 9:20 on a Saturday morning in Edison, which is an hour a family with jobs can keep, and that was the end of the planning.

My grandson was named in the same courtyard where my father named me. The land file that has swallowed most of my forties was in the next room in a jute bag, which is where it lives. One of those two things still had a day I could choose, so I chose it.

Four months into the shop and a daughter born, in the same year the loan was still running. My mother wanted the naming on the eleventh day and my wife's side wanted the twelfth. The report had the eleventh clear, with the syllable her name should start from, and the twelfth was not clear at all. A week of talking ended in one evening.