Do you tell your name to a stranger???

I didn’t, not for a very long time. I thought if I told my name to strangers I may get into trouble: they may act familiar with me, use my name for things I did not want it to be used.

It started very early, way back in school. I was a teenager then, taught to ignore comments by boys wanting to “make friendship” with me. Sometimes those comments were questions, usually ‘What is your name?’ I never answered that question, never except once.
A boy of my age used to follow me on his bicycle insisted day after day he wanted to know my name. I ignored him like I had ignored others before him. But he was cute. And naughty. And if it had not been for my conditioning I may have befriended him. But it was only because he was cute and naughty that I took the liberty to reply to him. He pleaded me to tell him my name and I barked back at him, “Chameli!” It was the unlikeliest of names for somebody of my age and the likeliest thing to turn him into silence. He never asked me my name again. Never came back to follow me.

When I was in graduation and started traveling in trains - usually alone, from Home - to Hostel, I had a very unoriginal but fictional name for any stranger on the journey who wanted to know my name. I called myself ‘sneha' for no particular reason. I do not know what I thought they would do with my name if they knew it but I never told my name.I was almost scared about not disclosing my identity.

but somewhere down the line I realised I was being very boring. I was closing myself off to a lot of people. They were strangers, yes, but how would I make new friends if I kept lying to strangers who could be my friends? Did I have to know people from somewhere, through somebody to befriend them? And I realised I could afford to be less serious on others and more secure with my name!Yesterday, Dee and I were at a bookstore browsing through books, discussing authors, must-reads, flipping through magazines when a young boy came up to us and started chatting with u. He complimented Dee, told us he was Afghanistani student here on a scholarship. And then he asked me my name.I did not pause to gave him the name by which everyone who knows me. I did not pause to make up another name for myself. I did not pause to think, after I had spoken to him, that I had done something out of my limit.But when I came back home, I realised it was probably the first time I had told a stranger my precious name. It felt good to be finally free to be Preety to a stranger....