Mum is from Tamil Nadu, Dad is from Mauritius. But it’s what used to happen, immigrants anglicising their names. It made me think, that’s a difficult thing to have to deal with it’s like losing your identity.
I said, why are you calling her that? And she said it’s her name and I said, no it’s not, her name is Muthu. Once when I was a child, a woman called my mum Michelle. Names are so important, identity is so important. I’ve always hated the name and for a while I thought about changing it to Nadia. My full name is Subha Nagalakshmi Munchetty-Chendriah – can you imagine spelling that for people when you’re a small child at school? But my mother started calling me Naga, because it means cobra and she dreamed of snakes when she was pregnant.