What Is Your Pet Name?

A few weeks ago, I heard that the redoubtable Ms Momota Banerjee had renamed West Bengal – as Poshchim Bongo. I thought it was extremely kind of her; I hadn’t had a topic to pick holes in for a while.

I see what this is, though. It’s the Rise of the Sons of the Soil. Or at least The Man wants us to think so. This is, ostensibly, the return of the prodigal, the step back into the idyllic ways of our past, the return to Ram-Rajya or Arthashastra or Vedic culture or whichever politico-philosophical zeitgeist is prominent at the moment. It’s an attempt to cleanse ourselves of that which corrupted us and the fabric of our culture.

But which one?

It is also an attempt to forget the insults and injuries of the past. The British, being the latest in a series of people who thought of taking candy from the largish baby that India was, are the Big Villains, the Evil Dark Lord, the Sith, the Monster Under the Bed, the Man With the Paddle who spanked us silly for 200 years. Everything they did was bad; everything they left behind is defiled and meant only to defile whatever they left of our once shining heritage – Sone ki Chidiya and all that guff. It’s an attempt to wipe out the trauma, dry the tears, live in denial and remember the good times. Whichever those were.

So it continues, then. Years ago the Brits came down and named everything Cawnpore and Trivandrum and Madras and Bombay and Calcutta and Victoria Terminus and Park Street and Connaught Place and all. Prolly because Clive and the rest of that white trash bunch didn’t brush their teeth (or clean their tongues) properly and didn’t figure how to pronounce anything more difficult than “London”.

And now the neo-antediluvians strut around with various agendas and myriad noses to brown and change everything. The Congress apotheosises the Gandhi dynasty and CP becomes Rajiv Chowk, with Indira Chowk (Outer Circle) encompassing it in a maternal fashion – like Ghar Ek Sansar. Bombay becomes Mumbai because the Thackerays say that Kolis worship Mumbra Devi and that’s what the city used to be called; all that talk about the word “Bombay” coming from the Portuguese Bom Bahia or “Good Harbour” is just European post-colonial propaganda. Fer sure. And so we have Chennai and Thiruvananthapuram and Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus and Mother Teresa Sarani and Kasturba Gandhi Marg and, I dare say soon, Mumbai Scottish School, Sambhajinagar, Pataliputra, Whatchamacallit Prayag and Dilli/Indraprastha.

And now Poshchim Bongo. Har har de bloody har.

Although the Banerjee claims a more practical reason for this change – it takes the state fro 28th to 21st place in the alphabetical order in the list of Indian states. I think I just swallowed my nuts laughing.