THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: Just five months old, Ila Krasny was among the participants of an unique get-together of Women’s Day.
Clutching her mom’s shoulder, this infant was the youngest among the group who came together under one roof for the gathering of women and girls who have Russian names.
The venue was the Russian Cultural Centre and the meeting was held as part of International Women’s Day celebrations in the city on Sunday.
Her father, a hardcore leftist, opted for an offbeat blend of Sanskrit and Russian for the daughter’s name to mean ‘Red Earth’. Others with Russian names like Volga, Thereshkova, Natasha Thomas narrated interesting stories about the origin of their names.
Four-year-old Nilovna Kishore’s mother Asha had a hard time to know exactly what her child’s name conveyed because the name of her child was a choice of her husband.
‘’All I got from the internet is the meaning of Nilo, that is a god’s gift. Then I came to know that it is the name of a female character of a book by Maxim Gorky,’’ says Asha.
Though her name makes her stand out anywhere, Natasha Thomas an eighth grader in L’ecole Chempaka has a namesake at school. ‘’There is one more Natasha at school in tenth standard,’’ she says.
MCom student Thereshkova from Alappuzha remembers meeting cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin when she was in seventh standard and sitting next to him. Bearing the name of the Russian cosmonaut, Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman to have flown in outer space, the ‘Malayali’ Thereshkova had met a person with the name of Gagarin at a get-together at Changanassery years back. Following this, she was in the news.
Her father Saheer was instrumental in bringing the name of Thershkova to the precincts of an orthodox family in an Alappuzha village.
’When I heard about Valentina Tereshkova’s achievements in those years I realised that women can make big accomplishments. So when my child was born I decided to give her that name,’’ says father Saheer, a retired employee from KSFE.
Volga, a higher secondary teacher from Thrissur, also was named so by her father Joseph, a believer of Left ideology. Her elder brother Patrice too bears the rarity in name. Volga also had thought out-of-the-box to pick a name for her daughter Feona, which has a cartoon character to share it.
‘’She studies in the same school where I teach and I am there to explain if someone wonders where the name comes from,’’ smiles Volga.