Blog Entry 3

             I am not convinced of Samantha Rau’s statement at the end of the memoir that states that Santha did not really care about Cynthia because of the different name, despite them being the same person. The author chose the title “By Any Other Name”, which is a reference to Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet in which Juliet says “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet”. The quote states that even if the name of something is changed, the owner of that name will still be the same with all the same memories, mannerisms, and physical appearance back when he still had his original name. In the story, ‘Cynthia’ is just another name for Santha, and it is stated that Santha remembers and see’s everything that Cynthia did. Also, it is implied that she took on the persona of ‘Cynthia’ for the duration of her school time. If that had been the case, and she had not been actively paying attention with all of her effort, she would not have remembered everything in such great detail. She can remember her teachers face down to how her glasses looked like, as well as give an approximation of how many people there were in the school and what it had looked like. She states that she cannot remember the proceedings in class very well, however in the next few paragraphs she begins to describe what she did during her first day, i.e. daydream and stare at a lizard hanging on the wall because she already knew pretty much everything the teacher was talking about. This alongside other details she remembered all adds up to the fact that, even if she was not particularly interested in Cynthia, she would still remember all of the events that happened because Santha watched them through ‘Cynthia’, and thus her own, eyes.