The first time I met her, I couldn't be more than ten years old. It was during the summer vacations and my ten-year old self had come up with a plan to escape the grueling heat and spend my days indoors, air-condition and all. I was helping out at my aunt's nursing home that summer. Answering calls and pretending to be important. And cooing over newborn babies, admiring their smallness, eager as the youngest child always is, to finally meet someone younger.
She entered the nursing home one afternoon, looking as clueless as I normally felt. She was heavily pregnant, looked to be in her teens and didn't look like she could afford a private nursing home. But my aunt greeted her warmly and I was told it was a part of something that can only be described as the CSR programme of the nursing home.
She stayed in the nursing home for a few days before her baby was born. It was a tiny beautiful little girl, who took a special liking to me for some reason. I hovered around her uncertainly for hours before one of the nurses allowed me to hold her.
"What's her name?" I asked her mother, as I cuddled her in my arms.
"Maya," she replied, smiling.
I couldn't help noticing though that Maya and her mother got no visitors. While the rest of the newborn babies had large extended families coming in at all hours to admire them, no one ever came to see Maya. In fact, even during the delivery, there had been no one in the waiting room, no expectant father or gushing grandparents, a type I was well-accustomed to, after working in the nursing home for a couple of weeks.
One day, I asked my aunt.
She looked thoughtful for a while before saying that she didn't know.
"Didn't you ever ask? What about grandparents, aunts, cousins...Why her mother can't be more than 18. She must have some family," I protested.
"I don't really know, Wips," my aunt said. "And anyway, it's none of our business."
I was even more curious later when they were leaving, and the form didn't have Maya's surname listed. I think she was the first person I had ever met without a surname.
But I was ten. And the summer was almost over. And once school reopened, I had other things to worry about. And anyway, I never saw Maya again so it was easy to forget.
But sometimes I think of her now, and I wonder what became of her.
And I wonder how difficult life could be, in this 21st century world, without a surname.
