Sunday, May 15, 2011

10, Downing Street, London!!



I live at 16, Accacia Avenue, Brooklyn, New York. Well, no, not really. But it kind of like has the "My name's Bond....James Bond"-ish feel to it! And its any day better than saying - " I live at Old No. 23-C, New No. 42/A, Old Mutthusaamy Chettiar Street, New Annadurai Pandurangan Street, North-East Chromepet (West), Old Madras, New Chennai, Tamil Nadu - 600023". Which brings me to my point - places in India have flabbergastingly ridiculous names! We want to chimpanzee the West in almost everything. But no, not in the names of the streets, localities, towns, cities, districts, tehsils, states...we live in!! During the almost quarter of a century of my existance in the Milky Way, I have lived in own fair share of cities across India - North, South, East & West - and all of them are the same. Without Exception!

So here is my take / comments on the names of various places in various cities where I've lived.

Lets start with Salem - the place of my birth. And my current 'home'town. Its a small town located somewhere in the middle of nowhere in the Southern most state of the Indian Subcontinent. Surprisingly, for a city which has its own public bus transport system, it has very few 'places' as such. All the buses seem to ply between the same two places!! And the names of the places are as boring as a History professor who has done his PhD on the Socio-cultural Drinking Etiquettes of Neanderthal Man!! A place where four (seemingly important) roads intersect is called Four Roads. They also have Five Roads. Seven Roads. 11 Roads. 28 Roads. And 42 Roads!! A place where they have a State Bank of India branch is called - guess what- SBI Colony!! (This can actually be the question for Rs. 1 crore in KBC...)

Moving North (of Salem), we arrive at Chennai, where I spent 5 years of my life pursuing engineering (OK. Before you start getting ideas like doesn't Engineering get over in 4 years, let me tell you that even though I was Heisenberg like intelligent, I did both my Bachelors and Masters in 5 years!) Digressing back to the topic:

a) Tamb(a)ram - Well if the Tam Brams did want to name a place in Chennai after themselves, they could definitely have been much more subtle...Tambaram just reeks of copyright infringement!!

b) Washermanpet - Its almost as if some politician had promised to name a place in Chennai after the Dhobis in return for their votes!

c) Guindy - Comes from Gundi - comes from Gunda (the movie)!

Moving to the West now, we have Bomb? Ay(e)!! Oops...I mean Mumbai. Although the bombs didnt stop exploding in Mumbai after its rechristening, the name Mumbai too is ironic... (Mumbai - Mum bai (maid servant). And the maids in Mumbai are anything but mum! They are always jabbering away to glory). But Mumbai tops the list in terms of the wackiest and weirdest names of places!

1) Can't be mentioned in a public forum.

2) Andheri - now this is what you call a PR nightmare! How can you possibly name a place Andheri and expect people to come and live there?! And its one of the most populated places in Mumbai!!!

3) Kalyan. Aptly named. Northern suburb of Mumbai. Wahan tak aake Mumbai ka kalyan shuru ho jaata hai!

4) Diva. No divas here!

5) Chinchpokli.

And then we have Patna. My native place. If Laloo Prasad Yadav hadn't made the entire state as big a joke as he was, I am sure people would have atleast died laughing after hearing the names of the localities in the state capital.

i) Kadamkuan. Har kadam pe kuan (read pothole)!

ii) Nala Road. I have just one question. Why???????

iii) Kankadbagh. Stone Garden. Really?!

iv) Exhibition Road. What could you possibly exhibit in Patna without it being looted, ransacked, kidnapped, murdered...

Last but not the least, we have saddi Delhi. The Capital. The Rape Capital. And also the Vihar Capital. 'Delhi' the word is every poet's delight. It rhymes with such a lot of things. Belly. Smelly. Jelly. Helly...which results in enterprising producers making films entitled 'Delhi (Under)Belly' to try and further defame Chandani Chowk. Thankfully, they didnt try and rename it to Dilli, which would have been ironic!

I) Connaught Place (Pronounced as Cannot Place) - Cannot what? Eat? Drink? Smoke? Puke? Spit? Piss? Have sex? Run naked? I have personally seen all of those things happening there. I just wish that our ancestors had been more specific...
II) Paschim Vihar, Preet Vihar, Anand Vihar, Sangam Vihar, Pragati Vihar, Harsh Vihar, Udyog Vihar, Vasant Vihar...
III) Lado Sarai - I am sure that the sex ratio there is as skewed as it is in the most interior villages in Haryana and Punjab!!

And finally.

HOGWARTS - HOG WARTS - WART HOGS - WARTHOGS.
I am 1,00,00,00,00,001% sure that this was the inspiration behind the name of Harry Potter's Alma Mater. If only J.K. Rowling could have read my blog...