Of Renaming Places

Somehow the very concept of renaming a place makes me go, "Urghhhh. Not again! Not this place too!"

The first ever name changes I remember happening during my lifetime were those of Bombay and Madras. There were obviously very valid reasons for these name changes. For one, Bombay was a scary place for foreign investors to come and establish themselves with its possible association with weapons of mass destruction. Madras had its own set of problems. Anywhere outside South India, Madrasi was a derogatory term and Chennaite sounded more hip and fashionable. The politicians thought 'let us bring about a change in this world' and whooosh, we had two brand new cities - Mumbai and Chennai.

Not to be left behind was Calcutta. After all it's also one of the Metropolitan Cities and the Communists' pride would be affected if they didn't follow suit in their homeland. And Calcutta became Kolkata.

As if these were not enough, very recently Bangalore became Bengalooru (you'll have to roll your tounge to pronounce the 'r' in Bengalooru correctly), Mysore became Mysuru. Hosur won't become Hosuru - unfortunately it managed to edge over the Karnataka border into Tamil Nadu during the second (lingual) Indian partition. These name changes make me confused about how to call some items. For one, what do I call a 'Mysore pak' as? (No no, don't think on those lines...)

Back home in Madras, the roads were renamed after famous politicians and popular figures. Mount Road became Anna Salai, Beach Road became Kamarajar Salai, Ponamallee High Road became Periar EVR Salai, Chamiers Road became Pasumpon Muthuramalinga Thevar Road, Nungambakkam High Road became Mahatma Gandhi Salai (yet another MG Road in another city), Lloyds Road became Avvai Shanmugam Salai, Royapettah High Road became Thiru Vi Ka Salai, LB Road became Dr.Muthulakshmi Salai... The list goes on. Imagine my problem if someone asks me the route from Nungambakkam to my home. I would start at explaining at 8.00 PM - "Start from Mahatma Gandhi Salai, go straight down the Avvai Shanmugam Salai, second right will bring you to Pasumpon Muthuramalinga Thevar Salai, and blah blah blah.. There you are, at my home." I look at my watch, it's 8.30 PM. The other person would have dropped dead on the spot.

As if names after dead politicians are not enough, we have the likes of KK Nagar and JJ Nagar named after still very much alive persons. God knows what will happen in another fifty years when additional hundreds of politicians would have ruled the roost. We'll need to start naming each and every house after the politicians, his/her kith & kin, sons & daughters, and (not to be left out) their housemaids and servants.

One thing which the politicians forgot is that 'Old habits die hard'. Kochi remains Cochin, Vadodara remains Baroda, Tiruvananthapuram remains Trivandrum, Puducherry remains Pondicherry, Thoothukudi remains Tuticorin. We still have IIT Bombay and IIT Madras, the Madras Christian College, Madras Music Academy... We still have 'The ET Madras Plus'. We still use Mount Road, Chamiers Road, LB Road, Ponamallee High Road, Royapettah High Road, Nugambakkam High Road, Beach Road... Rajiv Chowk in Delhi (or is it Dilli?) still remains Connaught Place. These politicians and leaders who want to rise to quick fame can never ever change these.

Of course, no one calls a Chennai resident as Chennaite (I still am a Madrasi, and am proud of it).

I take comfort at the mixed history of this renaming bug that bit our leaders, to safely still live in my own IIM Indore Campus in my own F-Block instead of in some Prabhandh Shikar in some Nishchith block. So when some of my poor non-Hindi speaking buddies ask me where I live, I don't have to give a (roughly translated) answer that will come to mean the 'management on a mountain top' campus and get little giggles. Thank God for saving me from this complicated way of explaining things!

The effect of renaming would ultimately be this much...

Before:


After:


Some interesting links:
What's in a name? from The Hindu dated August 05, 2001
The Politics of Name Changes in India from web page of a Ph.D student at UC Berkeley
List of renamed Indian public places from Wikipedia

A Tale of Two Companies - Successful, but starkly different

Think of the new, young, open, innovative kid off the block which is trying to change the way the world looks at internet; Scheming the death of all client-based applications; Aims to make everything right from Office Applications, Photo Editing, Mails, Storage Space (and any other thing that comes to your mind) available online.


Think of the other and you cannot, but smile at its resilience. Highly innovative, came up with radical new ideas and devices (think of GUI, laptop etc) that would have spelled glory - only to be snatched away at the most (in)opportune moment by another (then) rising company. It went through all the pains and all the lows that could ever hit a company to rise again from its own ashes coming up with new, sleek, hot devices that's flooding the world like a virus.


Can't think of a better way to describe these two rising behemoths. I can go on to write a book on these two sometime in the future.

Now, coming to why I sat down to write this post. These two companies are trying to redefine the way computing and communications will happen in the future, each charting its own path to glory (or doom?) that only time will tell. One is all about open source, simplification and the like while the other is about sleek, hip and modern.

I came across two articles today. One was about Gmail coming up with IMAP support to make it available on a client-based system like Thunderbird. (Turn Thunderbird into the Ultimate Gmail IMAP Client) Google is trying to make its applications more open to increase the user comfort. The other was about how people are defying the block imposed by Steve Jobs on Apple iPhone in a small shop in some remote corner of Mumbai. (Handbag seller takes on Steve Jobs) As Apple tries to apply brakes on the (so called) unauthorised 'opening' of iPhones, people become even more resilient in doing what they are not supposed to do.

An indication of how things will shape up in the future. It's time to wait and watch!

Blog Action Day

Today, I came across a site which plans to unite all bloggers around the globe with the concern for environment in mind. On October 15, every blogger registered in this site will post an article related to the environment. Here is the banner promoting the Blog Action Day.



Personally, I found this concept of uniting people for a common issue (faced every living thing on this planet) very appealing. Right now I'm thinking of a topic on which I can post. Lot of things come to my mind - initiatives in college to ensure that printing paper is not wasted, the rain-water harvesting equipment that every house in Chennai is fitted with in order to save the fast depleting ground water resource, my personal experience of the acute water scarcity that Chennai faced at the turn of the millennium and the subsequent actions taken to resolve this, initiatives taken in my apartments to have a healthy environment and hygienic surroundings and a lot more.