Me - A Japanese Name

By Yash Abhrankash Panda

Japanese culture has a pretty interesting manner of nomenclature. The names usually contain one to four characters or Kanji, Hiragana or Katakana, as they say in Japanese. Hiragana and Katakana are simpler Japanese alphabets. Kanji is based on Chinese (a foreign) transcript. The greater the number of characters, the more personal or affectionate the name is considered to be. A four-character name is therefore usually reserved for the eldest child. 

And we're now to read about a boy who was third in the row of four in his family. His name was Me. Me. Just one effort for the jaw and lips. One syllable. There were kids named Masaki, Masato, Minato in his class. He was, he didn't know why, envious of them. He never had a sense of belonging because of his short name, which means 'Eye' in their tongue but it didn't matter.

They lived in a village called Seidōnohanabira which means 'Bronze Petal' because the village, on the map, looked exactly like a petal and it had very rare rain showers which answers why it was of the colour bronze or brown. When it rained, everyone in the village would get out of the houses and soak their skins with the splattering drops of the rainy grace, put vessels out in the open for some clean water and not taking into account the mud under their feet which the rain caused, they danced and danced.

Meanwhile this little boy, Me, chose to go the the "fertile cluster" of the village, as they called it. It was a land where no sun hit because it was guarded by four giant trees, making a roof of branches and leaves. Me loved looking at people, dancing and happy. He found his peace when the trees would finally let the drops hit him after the water seeped through the dense leaves. It was a hobby which he developed somewhere in his childhood because he didn't feel loved as much as his siblings. He started finding happiness in others' and used to write about it in his personal journal. He couldn't help but just watch people at their highest joy of the year. The monsoon started late and was gone soon. They would devour every droplet which comes in their share.

Me is no more. He had turned eighteen on the 21st of July when monsoon finally touched the village that year. He was, as usual, sitting under the trees when a lightning strike hit him and he was dead, there, right there, right in front of the crowd; the crowd of hardly 378 who very well knew him, his parents included. His mom who he thought never bothered twice whether Me ate his breakfast, suddenly felt a gut-wrenching hormone releasing within her. Her name was Guren. It was her meat and blood which had grown into this lad who had a naive and vulnerable personality; always nervous, always troublesome, always hesitant, always clumsy. Me was pretty aware of himself and had his personal corner where he was the best poet in the world. The Best. The Elite-Most. His mom loved him; afterall, she was the only one who called him "Minoru" meaning 'the one who is blessed with fortune and glory'. 'Me' was the name imposed by Guren's in-laws. But that doesn't matter either. He had named himself 'Mephisto', as in Mephistopheles from Marlowe's Tragadie of Doctor Faustus, which she found out once she finally got to touch his journal after he passed away and she stopped crying. She broke down again while reading what he had written in his last entry, 20 July. It was a poem about how he found life meaningless and how he came to realise it's worth when he came through its flourishing intricacies.

The poem, in the best attempt of translation to English, goes:

an abysmally pretty damsel she was

amid the ochre yellow infinity; my pursuit

of something i thought i would be happy

if achieved, neither warned of nor approved.

she adorned a piece of cloth with herself,

a tint of sienna and bronze on her crust.

little could i devour her beauty when

she pierced my eyes, drenching me with thirst.

it felt like she put dreams in my head,

different from what i was chasing, or was made to;

putting me on a greener route,

evacuating me from "chase this, chase them." chase who?

there was a blank canvas all of a sudden

she disappeared into the sheer streches of wind

and all there left were wonderings in gallons.

a pebble hit my temple, startled me into consciousness

i woke up, searching in all the directions. found vanity.

my weak fingers heaved my bag, put it on my shoulder,

knees feet weak to walk ahead in ochre yellow infinity,

my pursuit. questioning the destiny,

so dead to walk, so sceptical of manifesting it.

many sleeps showed me the muse who woke me up

every morning, disappointing hope, gaining no tier.

i saw a lady, so beautiful that intimidates tilottama,

fell on the ground and her grace walked up to me.

water, i begged of her pot which she denied

saying it parches, not quenches, but the thirst in me

insisted on gulping it all, rights and wrongs playing riots.

she said a kiss of hers could quench my thirst

but i would add a mark of shame to her head.

i smiled at her and started walking past

when she strode up to me, pulled me to her chest,

kissed me love and kept kissing till i teared up

and held her in my embrace, shedding water i had drunk

she stopped and looked into my eyes.

she was the one i had dreamt all these years about.

i broke the gaze, asked her not to disappear this time,

she told she had to, poured dreams in my mind.

i begged her not to. she said it would parch, not quench.

"to hell with the pain. more or less, it hurts." i said.

"hurt of absence aches less than that of presence."

she preached with a tear rolling down, "I'll meet you in the end, when you stop walking, when you rest and see

time flying, when you get out of your shoes and see

what traumas others go through, what is called anarchy.

i'll meet you then and talk for a long time, holding each other,

understanding what's life and happiness. you'll be mine. all mine.

i'll call you for the last time and you would hate me the most.

i'm the death you won't want to meet then. i'm the ghost,

the apparition, the evil, the trap and all bad that the rest

of the world describes me as."

i was lost in thought when i realised she was gone.

it felt like she was a predator but spared this meak fawn.

a lot happened in moments and i was left with questions.

"am i alive? dead? how much of either am i? why?

what's happiness? is it a thing? a myth? where is it?"

my heart in her voice told me to just comply

and that it just exists. it doesn't need practising.

my pursuit doesn't end, neither does this poem.

bring me bites of music and puffs of happiness.

Guren read this poem to the whole family on the seventh day after Me passed away. "He didn't seem happy about the life he had, but it seems he wanted to live.... longer than this," Guren said with teary eyes. Her husband, Sakumo, wasn't able to push his tears back. Yukimi, 20, a girl, ran and hugged her father. She was his favourite. Bakugo, the eldest son, was 22 and kept his mother the highest. He hugged Guren and gestured at 12 years old Kotetsu who wasn't able to grasp anything at all but was sure that it was his turn to hug someone and cry. They prayed, had their breakfast and went out for memorial community work (Shonanoka) as Japanese people do to pay respect to the departed soul and have a sense of well-being among people.

Me, as his name suggested, was a mere eye watching and witnessing everything throughout his time. No matter how bad he felt about life, he clung to it but was called on by the Gods as if he was done watching. May the merciful put him to sleep on the warmest, softest lap.

稔 (kanji for minoru)

みのる (hiragana for minoru)

ミノル (katkana for minoru)

By Yash Abhrankash Panda