What’s in a name?

Having freely and happily derided every one of our neighbour to the East's changes of city names, I am more than a little worried that my house may have been made of glass after all

here I was, sitting in my office, minding my own business (literally) and cursing the ineptitude of Pakistan at cricket, when the Karachi Electricity Supply Corporation decided to throw a further furball in the mouth of my malcontent. We received our first-ever electricity bill.

On the face of it, this is not really an event that would cause much wailing and gnashing of teeth, but it did get me started on a train of thought which I feel compelled to share. On the bill, our street address was recorded as ‘McLeod Road.’ My immediate thought, when I noticed this, was wondering how many people (besides my own ignorant self) working on this road knew that it is/was/should be called McLeod Road, and not II Chundrigar Road at all. Following closely on the heels of this thought was another: How common is this phenomenon, and should we care?

Answer number one is: not many at all, but more than expected. In a poll conducted by yours truly at a gallop, less than five per cent of the people who have their own transportation knew what II Chundrigar Road was called before it was named so. For the people who travel by bus, though, the number was greater, as some conductors still insist on calling it by the old name. Similarly, people under the age of thirty were more likely to be ignorant of this fact.

Answer number two, undoubtedly, is: fairly common. A cursory look at bank branch names and the more battered signs on business establishments, especially in the older parts of town, testify readily to this. Stratchen Road is now Mohammad Bin Qasim Road; Bunder Road (named not for any simian connections, but for the fact that it led to the harbour) is now MA Jinnah Road. Also, there is Elphinstone Street, better known as Zaibunnisa Street, and Dr Daudpota Road, formerly known as EI Lines. And, of course, who can forget Drigh Road, aka Shahrah-e-Faisal? The list goes on and on. Readers may well be thinking of street names they have similarly seen metamorphosing over the years.

Digressing a little, even the names of roads that have remained unchanged have been affected by the inflections of the populace. Burns Road is now universally ‘Bunceroad,’ and those bus conductors and old-timers who still remember it by that name call McLeod Road, ‘Mackleow Road.’ This seems to suggest that such name changes are, at least to some extent, part of the anthropological evolution of a city, as local tongues change names so that they can be better wrapped around them.

On the topic of anthropological evolution, then, we come to the crux of my thoughts over the past few days. Have we, who have scoffed at the Hindutva-isation of India, ignored a similar malaise that has been creeping up on us all the while? Or is our own rewriting of history, in street name terms at least, the natural progression of a city constantly redefining itself? In other words, should I be employing this piece to glorify this trend, or to gripe about it?

My first instinct is to gripe. I am acutely aware that changes in street names are often a reflection of the changing balance of political power in the city and the nation as a whole. Being aware of the damage that politics has caused to the fabric of the city in the past, and being generally politically apathetic myself, I am cautious of any moves which could polarise, jeopardise or any-other-ise the city. Also, having freely and happily derided every one of our neighbour to the East’s changes of city names, I am more than a little worried that my house may have been made of glass after all. This feeling is made even more acute when it seems that roads and roundabouts are being renamed throughout the city, either after someone wielding a chequebook or after the neighbour’s cousin’s son-in-law’s uncle of whoever is in power at the moment.

Speaking of roundabouts, the Submarine Roundabout continues to be called that, despite the fact that neither submarine nor roundabout remain any more. This is, I feel, a case of the mind sticking to what is familiar, in the way that old-timers still use the colonial street names. So that, too, would appear to be a name that is fated to be lost; it is a mere matter of time. After all, why should my nephew, who was born after the submarine ceased to be, have any reason to call it that? Unlike me, he has no mental reference point.

On the other hand, there are new names which are embraced by one and all in a remarkably short length of time. A classic case of this is the Schön Circle, which, despite being named recently and representing a clear case of corporate name-dropping, has been absorbed into the Karachi street lexicon in a manner that makes it hard to believe that there was actually a time when the name did not exist.

What, then, makes some names persist, and others fade away? Why are some names met with instant acceptance, while others are consigned to be used only in maps and official documents? I feel that the reasons are, in each case, unique. Bunder Road was, of course, immortalised in song, which can never hurt. In other cases, such as Schön Circle, perhaps, a landmark was just crying out for a name. The circle may now be long gone, but the name shows no sign of weakening its grip.

I realise that, in my own meandering way, I am no closer to reaching a conclusion on whether these changing street names are a first step towards the ‘Mumbaification’ of the city, or whether it is a case of a city for ever on the move, running to keep up with its own evolution. I guess that in the end, this is a decision that each one of us will have to make on our own.

None of this explains, however, why ‘Marine Promenade’ was renamed ‘Beach Avenue,’ and that, ultimately, makes my mind up. A lot of street name changes are arbitrary, frivolous, unnecessary and unwelcome. They remove the romance and history of the city with banality or, worse, barely suppressed political rhetoric. In other words, what I call the ‘Mumbai Syndrome.’ I do not think that the city is due to be renamed ‘Kolachi,’ or ‘Krokola’ even, any time soon, but I still feel that in most cases, this reverse colonisation is either unnecessary or unwelcome, or both.

What this means in the short term is that I need to think of a suitable story for my nephew, so that he too can call the Submarine Roundabout by its proper name. Suggestions to this end are welcome.