Varghese - D'Wergiz

I never liked my last name. What kind of a name is Varghese after all? To be honest, I have never used my last name much while I was in India. I preferred to use my middle name, which is George, and sounded way more cooler than Varghese. In school I was known as George and the same goes for college too. The only time I probably used Varghese was when someone in college showed me that it could be spelt in a more cooler way, like D'Wergiz (D is silent). I even created my own ID in college with my last name as D'Wergiz. That craze lasted just a few weeks and I was back to using George. I had even considered, or you can say fantasized about changing my last name. Varghese was a really Mallu name and yeah, that was probably the stage in my life when I was trying to run away from my roots, and kerala itself.

In India we usually refer to a person by their first name. At least this has been my experience and we very rarely refer to someone using their last name. I guess I may have got so used to hearing just my first name and somewhere along the way I may have forgotten that I had the name Varghese attached to the end, and using George as my last name was probably because we all need a last name. This I learnt when I entered college and seniors would initially ask me, "hey junior, what's your name bitch?" To that I would reply, "Divyan, sir." This was immediately followed by," Ahh, I see you don't have a father" or some were even more harsh, and would say, "Don't you have a father you fucker?" Not wanting to leave with a bruised ego, and body, I would reluctantly reply, "My name is Divyan George, Sir" And that, my dear friends, is how I learnt the value of a last name.

Coming away to the USA and having people call me by name was weird at first. A big shift from what I used to hear back in India. Here your last name is used frequently and some even call you by your last name. All my official documents had my last name as Varghese, because I never changed it, instead only fantasized about changing it. So each time someone called me, I would not respond because I was not used to hearing that name. Slowly I got used to it as it was used frequently in my place of work, and even in class, where I was called as Varghese, with awful pronunciations. The most common pronunciation I have heard is Var-ghey-zee and I have been asked if it is an Italian name. I guess it bares some resemblance to some Italian name. So, Varghese Varghese everywhere and no George to be seen/heard. My college e-mail ID has my name as "Divyan Varghese" and when I mailed a friend using that ID, he asked me, "Who the hell is Divyan Varghese, I thought you were Divyan George?" That's how much I have used my last name before. Right now people double check if I mention the name George, which I don't usually do now. It has disappeared, just how Varghese disappeared few years ago.

Anyway, I like my name now. I think its nice and sounds kinda nice. Not because people think it sounds Italian. It does not, and not because I hear it more often. I have begun using my rightful last name now, not because I want to prove that I have a father named Varghese, and not because I want to keep my ego intact. It was a name given to me with so much love and meaning, and I guess I must respect that. Sure it's my name and I have every right to change it if I don't like it, but the point is, I like it now. Every bit of it. Every V, every A, every R, every G and so on. LOL.
In case you're wondering, heck yeah, I would gladly pass this name on to my kid.