This is Kâli Sapien. reBorn November 27th, 2022.

A very difficult phone call

Me in my mother’s lap at 13 days old, with my sister and paternal grandmother. We are all sitting on the kitchen floor of the families ancestral home in Chandigarh.

I was born at 1:04am in a government hospital in Chandigarh, India to Varsha and Sunil Kakkar. I was given the name Mansi Kakkar. Kakkar to carry on my father’s ancestral legacy. A legacy that survived by jumping onto trains to India from our homeland in Pakistan in the face of massacre of Hindus during the India-Pakistan Partition in 1947.

Since my mother chose my sister’s name, democracy called for my Father to choose mine. He chose Mansi. In Hindi, this word means ‘of the mind’, or ‘of intellect’. My mom tells me, my dad hid under my mom’s hospital bed the night I was born, because he lost track of visiting hours engrossed playing with me. She says, I was full of life, laughter, and curiosity from day one.

34 years later, I am anxious about making a call to my father. I am staring at the WhatsApp window hesitating to dial. Anxiety is here because I am wanting to ask for his blessing to change my name. This was one step among many in a larger redesigning of myself that I was going through. This redesigning was catalyzed by a complete breakdown at age 34. A full of life, laughter, and curiosity Mansi, had somehow gone missing. My commitment to life was gone. I had given up on a deeper level that was new, alarming to who and what I thought I was.’. My mental capacities had given out on me. I felt like a newborn in an adult’s dying body. My name Mansi did not resonate anymore, even though my ears held primordial familiarity with it. Mansi Kakkar felt, like a person I knew very well a very long time ago.

My paternal grandparents ,sister, someone I don’t know and my dad with me on his lap.

Within a matter of a week, I was forced to question and reassess everything about who I thought I was, my past and therefore the choices I was making in the present. This breakdown put me on an existential crash course. Like a child, I grasped at any help, through the medical system, alternative medicine, books, and videos as my body’s fatigue became unbearable to an otherwise overachiever, over-scheduled over-doing Mansi. After months of this turmoil, I surrendered to the breakdown. I was on my knees praying to everything and nothing. The surrender slowly became a breakthrough - to use this tectonic rupture in the mind, body, and heart as an opportunity for regeneration. An unasked-for, albeit potent opportunity to redesign who I am from my deepest essence - my soul. And to symbolically present the months of ruthless confrontational work that is the essence of regenerating oneself - I just knew a new name was inevitable. I was no longer ‘of the mind’. I was now ‘of soul-heart-body and mind.

The first person I called about this was my mother. It was unexpectantly, the most enjoyable conversation. She resisted my chosen name, and even tried to market other possible names for me. But, she gave me her blessing and became the first person to call me by my chosen name. It was a very special moment. It felt ripe and right.

Now, I was calling to speak with dad. Somehow it felt harder for he had given me 100% of my name. It also represented me speaking my truth, denying the patriarchal hold on my name to the head of my families household. In my culture, a woman takes the name of her spouse. In some families, upon being married, a woman is also given a new first name by her husband. It is also customary for a Guru to give a disciple a new name.

Without wedding bells or a husband, on the intuition on my inner Guru - I was choosing to change my whole name.

My parents, my sister and me on some outing somewhere I cannot remember.

“Why did you name me Mansi papa?” I ask this after spending 15 minutes talking about literally everything else.

“I liked the sound of it” he says. “It seemed unique to me”

“How do you feel about your name?” He asked.

I am surprised by this question. My father is a man of few words and has seldom asked me how I FELT about something. I conclude mom has spoken to him. I become grateful and braver.

I reply honestly, “I have had a love-hate relationship with it” In Mumbai, every other person was Mansi so it felt too common. And here in the US, everyone has a hard time pronouncing it. But deep down, it felt like a piece of clothing stitched to my skin, that never truly fit.”

I follow that confession with the purpose of my call.

“How do you feel about me asking for your blessing to change my name?” I ask him.

“You see, what I am realizing is, that I am constantly discovering myself even at my age. I keep finding new facets of who I am. And if changing your name feels resonant to the core of who you are and who you are becoming, then you have my blessing without question.”

My anxiety gave way to expansion, peace, gratitude, and love. I had been so scared to tell my parents, and they had both not only accepted but surprised me with a deep level of insight and creativity.

My parents got this car right around the time I was born, I guess it was my first birthday gift haha.

The first birthday gift we all get

The first gift of being born human is that we are given an identity. The first part of this identity is a unique expression of who we are and the other two parts middle and last signify our lineage.

The name I am choosing for myself is Kâli Sapien.

Kali in Hindi means ‘the black one’ or the ‘dark one’. Kali is a powerful (and very misunderstood) Goddess in India and with the spiritual diaspora the world. Kali’s iconography shows her naked, wild, a fierce woman with her tongue sticking out, wearing a necklace of severed heads and a skirt of severed hands. She is also shown standing on the dead corpse of her spouse- Shiva.

Intuitively this imagery has never felt right. It has felt like a man’s fear-based perception of the power of the feminine. The sense to me of Kali is that she is dedicated to facing her fears. That brings forth a splendid pure form of freedom. Her living her truth from this freedom is experienced as fierce for it forces us to face our own. Her body is adorned by the wounds of her own internal battles, her wars with her own fallacies. Her own oppression of her power. This work is painful and hard and her spouse Shiva is not killed by her wrath, but more lovingly offers his chest for her to stand higher in her splendid truth.

In India, women are named after all other goddesses, Lakshmi, Parvati, Gauri, Sita, Radha, and Saraswathi, I have not yet come across a woman named after Kali. This comes as much from the misperception of who she is as it comes from a Colonial residue, a learned preference for light skin. You see Kali is painted blue/dark to depict her black/blue skin color. If you are Indian, I invite you to explore how we are complicit with Anti-Blackness even today by listening to Aretha Basu’s brilliant talk here.

To reclaim the feminine power from patriarchal misperceptions- I chose to be called Kali. To loosen the grip of that colonial residue- I choose to be called Kali.

But there is also a deeper spiritual reason for this choice, which when seen in some ways is not really a choice, but an acknowledgement of what is. Kali chose me. She chose me many years ago and only with time has her choosing of me become apparent to my own self. In that was this name is also an acknowledgement of a power bigger than me that uses me.

However, as I started to share my chosen name with people - the mispronunciation of Kali became an evident problem. Kelly, and Callie were some of the pronunciations I heard. I researched accents and found the French circumflex ‘^' to denote the correct sound. And chose the spelling Kâli. (phonetically ‘Cah-lee’, â is pronounced roughly like an English “ah” as in an American “hot” or British “bath”)

Our last name describes our lineage, and our ancestry and while there is beauty in that, there is also a separation inherent in identifying with a tributary of history. The river is a singular species - Homo Sapien. The most primordial origin story for who I am. Therefore to denote my ancestry to be historically inclusive of not just my ethnic lineage, I am choosing one that represents all ethnic lineages. Everyone who is Homo Sapien is a relative. A member of my tribe. Is worthy of my love, devotion, and respect. The suffering of any Sapien is a painful weave in my own personal history.

Here is the sobering truth. This aspiration of extending love, devotion, and respect to every sapien is an improbable task, meaning I am likely going to fail. But it feels essential enough for me to die trying. I choose to make my name a reminder of both this sacred aspiration and its probable failure. This brings me both courage and humility.

Moreover, Sapien is tied to our understanding of evolution. Of the collaborative interspecies dance of millennia that generated the potential we call - Homo Sapien.

And placing the mystical feminine energy of Kali with the grounded masculine scientific Sapien is very poetic of who I am. I move between the worlds of science and spirituality. Of mystery and matter.

My gift to myself, all sapien, the planet and the divine is the name Kâli Sapien.

reBirthday time! My Regeneration Day

The day I experienced my essence of love and also the rage of the trauma caused by culture to all #sapiens and #earth is November 27th, 2022.

I am Kâli Sapien, regenerated on November 27th, 2022. Embodied since April, 6th 1988.

Kâli Sapien - of the planet, by the divine, for the people.