‘I cannot tell you if you will meet this “Me” in the story. The reflection of a man in a mirror does not know the whole story of the man it is reflecting. Consider this: My real name is Dagdu; you’ve forgotten that, right? So have I. But that’s the name you’ll see in the school register. No one in the city knows me as Dagdu. Who knows whether even my wife and children know the name. Since my childhood I’ve hated this name. Shakespeare may have said, “What’s in a name?” but tell me, why should this name fall to my lot? It smacks of a clod on which a clod was born. Look at our nicknames— Kachrya, which conjures up dirt; Dhondya, which suggests stones. If by some chance someone were to name his child Gautam, it would be shortened to Gavtya. The Manusmriti has a list of names for Shudras; it requires that our names should reflect society’s contempt for us. Brahmins’ names signify learnedness—“Vidyadhar”, for instance. Kshatriyas’ names suggest valour—like “Balaram”. Vaishyas can be named after the goddess of wealth, say “Laxmikant”. And Shudras? For us, names like Shudrak or Maatang, names that declare our low-caste status. That was the order of things for centuries.’