This name is your name…or is it?

Was travelling by metro and was coming back from DU station and coming to CP…and i asked for a ticket to which the guy at the counter said “one ticket for Rajiv Chowk”…and that set me thinking

Connaught Place was renamed Rajiv Chowk some years back. But no one except babudom calls it that. Shops in CP never changed the address on their name boards in defiance and the population in Delhi never called it by another name except what they have used all their lives…In fact I make it a point to call it CP at metro stations where it is officially Rajiv Chowk.

But then again, I have no qualms calling Madras Chennai or Bombay Mumbai or Calcutta Kolkata. But I do have qualms calling Bangalore Bengaluru…So what gives?

Its not just affinity for a particular place. Then I would have minded calling Calcutta Kolkata since I have grown up with that name and has a lot of cultural affinity with it…But I do have a problem with calling CP Rajiv Chowk…and that's not only because the Gandhi family wants to put their name across every damn centimetre of Delhi!!!

One obvious reason is that the name should be something that is in quiloquial use – Calcutta was always called Kolkata by its inhabitants for example, Mumbai was sung as Mumbai in old Hindi songs and so on…

But I think a further determinant and I think a more important one is that it should sound nice!!! Because its not only the inhabitants who will speak it but the rest of the country and if the rest of the people don't catch on, its never going to be popular. Nobody wanted to say Bengaluru, really…it sounded, well..vulgar!!!. Of course, there was a pride in the word Bangalore with the feeling of doing a service of reverse imperialism. Chennai sounded ok and it gradually slipped into use, as did others. Rajiv Chowk could not compete with the glamour of the name of Connaught Place since it was a name that evoked pride for Delhites, being one of the best well planned shopping complex in the country with a heritage value. And RC sounded pedestrian and uncool in front of CP!!!. If Delhi is renamed Dilli, it wont cause too much of a flutter either.

So the trick for netas – make it sound cool. We like to roll over our tongues over nice sounding words!!! Because in this case, rose by by another name is not a rose!!!

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