(Source : The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri)
At the appointed time, his case was called. He entered a room and sat on an empty wooden bench at the back. The judge, a middle-aged, heavyset black woman wearing half-moon glasses, sat opposite, on a dais. The clerk, a thin young woman with bobbed hair, asked for his application, reviewing it before handing it to the judge. There was nothing decorating the room apart from the Massachusetts state and American flags and an oil portrait of a judge. "Gogol Ganguli," the clerk said, motioning for Gogol to approach the dais, and as eager as he was to go through with it, he was aware, with a twinge of sadness, that this was the last time in his life he would hear the name uttered in an official context. In spite of his parents' sanction he felt that he was overstepping them, correcting a mistake they've made.
"What is the reason you wish to change your name, Mr.Ganguli ?" the judge asked.
The question caught him off-guard, and for several seconds he had no idea what to say her "Personal reasons," he said eventually.
The judge looked at him, leaning forward, her chin cupped in her hand. "Would you care to be more specific ?"
At first he said nothing, unprepared to give any further explanation. He wondered whether to tell the judge the whole convoluted story that his parents couldn't get the good name as was to be proposed by their grand parents in-time, to be furnished in his birth-certificate, and about pet names and good names, about what had happened on the first day of kindergarten. But instead he took a deep breath and told the people in the courtroom what he had never dared admit to his parents. "I hate the name Gogol," he said. "I've always hated it."
"Very well," the judge said, stamping and signing the form, then returning it to the clerk. He was told that the notice of the new name must be given to all other agencies, that it was his responsibility to notify the Registry of Motor Vehicles, banks, schools. He ordered three certified copies of the name change decree, two for himself, and one for his parents to keep in their safe-deposit box. No one accompanied him on this legal rite of passage, and when he stepped out of the room no one was waiting to commemorate the moment with flowers and Polaroid snapshots and balloons. He emerged into the muggy afternoon, perspiring, still partly convinced it was a dream. He took the T across the river to Boston. He walked with his blazer clasped by a finger over his shoulder, across the Common, through the Public Garden, over the bridges and along the curving paths that rim the lagoon.
He wondered if this was how an obese person to become thin, for a prisoner to walk free. "I'm Nikhil," he wanted to tell the people who were walking their dogs, pushing their children in strollers. He wandered up Newbury Street as rain drops began to fall. He dashed into Newbury Comics, bought himself London Calling and Talking Heads : 77 with his birthday money, a Che poster for his dorm room. He pocketed an application for a student American Express card, grateful that his first credit card would not say Gogol in raised letters at the bottom. "I'm Nikhil," he was tempted to tell the attractive, nose-ringed cashier with dyed black hair and skin as pale as paper. The cashier handed him his change and looked past him to the next customer, but it didn't matter ; instead he thought of how many more women he could now approach, for the rest of life, with this same unobjectionable, uninteresting fact. Still, for the next three weeks, even though his new driving licence says "Nikhil," he was aware that every one he knew in the world still call him Gogol.
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