So did I. At the high school, Raman Menon peered over his glasses and said, ‘Koman. That’s a pet name, if I may use the phrase. Doesn’t he have a proper name? And what about his surname?’ My father narrowed his eyes into slits. In the few days I had been with him, I knew the import of that look. ‘His name is Koman, with no tails, tags or suffixes.’ My father spoke softly. The headmaster, who even in the heat of Shoranur wore a dark suit to work, blanched. I felt a chill blaze my back. He was the headmaster, but my father made him seem like a silly boy. ‘Koman,’ he wrote in a register. ‘Age?’ So there I was. Koman with no tags, tails or suffixes, age twelve, enrolled in a school and a new life. With a ready-made family: father, mother, two younger brothers. And a river that cradled me. I ought to have been happy. But I had this ‘I’ to battle with. When I had referred to myself as Koman, I knew who Koman was. I asked no questions of Koman. I accepted that Koman was a boy whose mother was dead and whose father lived elsewhere because he had a livelihood to earn.
