I had an incredibly large name. From end to end, it stood as Subhobroto Dev Raj Mazumder and obviously was to a certain extent a burden for me to carry it about in my younger days at school. My classmates who had relatively concise and convenient names like Ravi Roy and Sohail Sharma used to infuse inside me a lot of inferiority complex regarding my christening and as a result made me a bit unhappy about my primary identity. After bearing with this type of nomenclature for six full years of my life, I rebelled against it and stopped brushing my teeth and eating my breakfast of cornflakes and even refused to go to school for three consecutive days. And this I threatened to continue until my name was shortened to a more apt and bearable one like my friends.  It was at this point I came to learnt that the middle portion of my name was contributed by my aunt who had some sort of fascination for Dev Anand where as Raj was added by my grandfather who wanted my name to bear the aura and majesty of the zamindars who we probably were some generations back. My first name was courtesy my mother where as my father gave me my surname. Such a diverse collaboration resulted in such a gigantic name. Yet now I shudder to think that if I had a few more relatives at hand who also wanted to contribute something to my name, it would have been quite difficult for me to remember it. However, at dinner time on the third day of my rebellion, my wish as well as my threats were made known to all the members of the family and their opinions were sought regarding any change in status of my naming. None of them seemed sympathetic towards me and my cousin (my didi) wanted to add the name of her favorite footballer Pele to my name. This proposal was thankfully rejected. It was after much discussion and coaxing that my aunt agreed to give in and withdraw her part of contribution from my name citing that in these six years of my existence I had done nothing to make myself as respectable or charming as Dev Anand and this might be a negative impact and  harmful for the latter’s publicity. My grandfather also had some doubts regarding my being somewhat as aristocratic as a zamindar of British times and hence decided to chop the Raj part of it. Yet whatever remained of my name was still a formidable one and no one wanted to curtail it any further. Neverthless, it was decided that my name would be squeezed to a new nickname Subhom which would be more commensurate to my size and by which I would be called most of the times. This eventually became my name henceforward and even after 20 more years continues to stay as my basic identity and probably the recognition of my first and last successful decision and endeavor.