I read Michael Ondaatje's book, Anil's Ghost, about two years ago now. It's a great book about a woman named Anil, who is a Sri Lankan forensic anthropologist investigating the political murders that had happened on the island during the civil war there.
There is one sentence from the book which occasionally rises in my memory that I'm still totally puzzled by.
When she was 12, Anil decided her given name was unacceptable and wanted to take the name "Anil", which was her 14-year-old brother's second name. He resisted, and after a lot of arguing and a failed intervention by their parents, Anil finally got her name by giving her brother:
...one hundred saved rupees, a pen set he had been eyeing for some time, a tin of fifty Gold Leaf cigarettes she had found, and a sexual favour he had demanded in the last hours of the impasse.
Three of the items I understand, but the fourth? Ondaatje offers no further explanation of this strange combination of goods it took Anil to get the name and never revisits it in the book. Could I be the only reader left wondering...
I didn't read the book...but it's a good thing this is "America" and all I had to do to change my name was to go to court!
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