Kishore Singh: I'm a Shekhawat too!

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"I'm thinking of taking out an ad in the papers," I said to my wife, "one of those things for changing one's name." "You mean 'I so-and-so will henceforth be known as so-and-so'?" she asked. "Right," I confirmed, for that was indeed what I had in mind. "That's all right with me," she said, "I don't particularly care for your name anyway. But you must take my approval because, after all, I will also be known as Mrs so-and-so." I could see she had fallen into the trap of imagining that I wanted to change my name for reasons of numerology, or because I thought Hrithik or Shahrukh might sound better. "No, no," I quickly disabused any such notions, "all I want to do is reclaim my name."

Naturally, I did not expect her to understand for it was many years ago that I had shortened, if not actually changed, my name. At a time when people perhaps considered it rude to check on one's ancestors, our community had got around that barrier by creating a series of codenames that you wrote ahead of your name. So, if you were the head of the family, you were, naturally, Thakur so-and-so. Thakur so-and-so's son then wrote Kanwar before his own name; the grandson's name was preceded by Bhanwar, and should there be the good fortune to actually live to see one's grandson, why then he would be Tanwar so-and-so.

It worked wonderfully, but there was a flaw in the system, which is that if you wrote your whole name then of course there was always the danger of it changing, so friends who called you Bhanwar in school would one day realise they could no longer call you that because you had overnight become Kanwar.

To complicate things further, my father had gone the whole hog when I was admitted to school and added a weighty surname so that when written out, the four-barrelled name stretched across a whole page and was impossible to fit on to a label. It can be a cruel thing at school, where everyone else is simply Vijay Kumar or Ravi Verma, to be a Bhanwar Kishore Singh Shekhawat.

"I see," said my wife, "you want to resurrect your surname now that it is famous because the occupant of the President's House is Mrs Shekhawat." "The thought," I conceded, "did cross my mind." I explained that when I was going to college, I simply dropped the two names before and after my name, and since authorities then were more lax than they are these days, I ended up with the abbreviated name on my driving licence, my marriage certificate and my passport. "I can understand," said my wife, "that you were embarrassed about something preceding your name, but why didn't you stick with the surname?"

So I told her the whole shaming tale. "When my parents would take us home on our annual vacations, some uncle, purely for mischief, would want to know which branch of the Shekhawat clan we were." When, ultimately, I found out that we were Ugrawat, the relative would insist I write it as my actual surname, which meant having a very long name indeed. "Yes, I can see what a problem that must be," said my wife. "Not half of it," I groaned, "because having established that we were Ugrawat, another cousin now wanted to know the next branch, which my mother thinks might be Pratapwat."

At such a young age, to be known as Bhanwar Kishore Singh Shekhawat Ugrawat Pratapwat was more than I could take, so I shed the unnecessary baggage, but now that it might be prudent, I'm claiming one of those surnames back. Meanwhile, I'm also trying to figure out what Shekhawat Madam President's husband might possibly be...