title: Unable to remove unicode char from column names in pandas under Python 2.x
body: <p>I have read a csv file in pandas dataframe and am trying to remove the unicode char <strong>u</strong> from the column names but with no luck.</p>
  
  <pre><code>fl.columns
  Index([ u'time', u'contact', u'address'], dtype='object')
  
  headers=[ 'time', 'contact', 'address']
  fl=pandas.read_csv('file.csv',header=None,names=headers)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Still doesnt work</p>
  
  <pre><code>fl.columns
  Index([ u'time', u'contact', u'address'], dtype='object')
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Even the rename doesnt work either</p>
  
  <pre><code>fl.rename(columns=lambda x:x.replace(x,x.value.encode('ascii','ignore')),inplace=True)
  fl.columns
  Index([ u'time', u'contact', u'address'], dtype='object')
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Can anybody please tell me why this is happening and how to fix it ? Thanks.</p>