What’s in a name?

For me, unforgettable memories!

Shakespeare’s rose may smell as sweet even if called otherwise, but the association with names is a strong one, dredging up moments from past encounters, conjuring up images, sounds and aromas.

As I pick over the treasure trove in the showcase, I am transported to different lands thanks to the travelers who visited our shores.

Remember Ceylon? The name evokes the scent of tea and walls decorated with metal silhouettes. The latter were round, dinner plate size and depicted scenes of coconut trees, boats and fishermen. Beaten into shape and painted an unrelieved black, they were travel souvenirs and de rigueur gifts from returning relatives. Today, Ceylon is Sri Lanka and though it is a beautiful and much in demand tourist destination, the present name conjures up, somehow, cricket and the ethnic strife both of which dominate our television screens.

Then there is Burma. Romantic Burma: Burma of the teak, the brass and the pagodas. There was excitement and adventure associated with the name. I still have the charm bracelet handed down to me by an aunt who made several trips in the late '40s/early '50s. Hand-wrought in brass, it is very delicate and the charms are unusual – a palanquin, a rickshaw, a fish in a dish, an oilcan, an elephant, a clog, a fishing boat and a whistle which really works! Many Anglo-Indians and Anglo-Burmese had common roots and a visit to Burma was a visit to family. Today, Myanmar is associated with a repressive, military dictatorship.

And, what about Bombay? What was once a city with well apportioned stone-faced buildings, leafy avenues, sea-front boulevards, and known for 'Bombay Halwa' is now Mumbai – overcrowded, dirty and with buildings that crumble within a short span of time. Bombay was the port of call and departure for the inward and outward bound seafaring traveler. Mumbai still is. But, somehow, it is just not the same. The poetry is missing. No‘Quinquireme of Nineveh from distant Ophir.…’* visits the mind.

People, places, things linked in a showcase: each souvenir recalls the person; the person recalls the place, and each place is thereby coupled by the souvenir to its past.

*Cargoes - John Masefield