“Can you give me one ticket for Sri Balagangadhar Natha Swamiji Station, please?” I asked the booking window clerk at Peenya metro in Bangalore. The guy looking quite puzzled said, “ Can you repeat the name, please?” After going through that exercise once again, he said, “why don’t you say Hosahalli then?” I said I would have loved to do the same, but the govt changed the name to the present one.

Other  station names  on Bangalore metro are no different. They may not be that long but are indeed tongue twisters. There is Krantiveer Sangoli Rayanna Station, Nadaprabhu Kempegowda station, Bayappanahalli, Yelachenahalli, Goraguntepalya etc. of which the last one was earlier called as Yeshwanthpur Industry. But then the nearby station being Yeshwanthpur; wiser counsel of Namma Metro authorities prevailed to rename it as Goraguntepalya.

Should a name be simple or difficult to pronounce? Bangalore apart from being the capital of Karnataka happens to be the IT capital of India. There are people from different states as well as from different nationalities too. Once I saw a Japanese commuter struggling to pronounce Yelachenahalli while buying a ticket!

There were huge protests when the train announcements were made in Hindi and later on it was decided to have the same only in English and Kannada. There was hardly any murmur when the project was delayed by more than 4 years or the project cost escalated from Rs. 6000 crores to Rs. 14,000 crores for the green and purple lines. This phenomenon of sweating out the small stuff is not unique to Bangalore but happens elsewhere too. C. Northcote Parkinson, a renowned management guru once said that for a Nuclear Power plant in England, the sanction of additional  5 million pounds for an alternate design was passed in five minutes whereas the committee deliberated for almost   a week about the location of the cycle stand in the power plant. The former topic needed considerable level of technical competency whereas in case of the latter, every committee member had an opinion on the subject.

New York times once said that the greatest sex change operation was conducted in Mumbai a few years back when Victoria Terminus (VT) station was renamed as Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) It is  a marvellous structure  ( now declared as a UNESCO heritage site) the headquarters of Central Railway with 18 platforms and currently carrying millions of passengers every day. It took the architect William Stevens and his team, ten long years and the railway station which was completed  in 1888 was planned keeping the future traffic growth in mind. One wonders how could  the British team plan for such a mammoth station when the traffic might be just a miniscule then ( 150 years back) of what it is today? Is there any comparable station constructed in post-independence India? But then changing the name was far easier and more prestigious for the politicians. Some years down the line, the name was extended to Chhhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus ( CSTM). The day is not far off when it may be even called as Gobrahmin Pratipalak, Kshatriya Kulavatans  Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus ( GPKKCSMT) !!

Once a teacher was narrating a story to the class of 5^th standard students on similar lines.  During a cricket match played on the school grounds, the  ball  fell into a nearby well. Ram, a fielder, while fetching the ball; fell in the well.  His friends shouted for help.  Luckily Ram was rescued. Next time, in a similar situation,  another student called Ardhanarinateshwara  Sivaramakrishan while fetching the ball meets the similar fate. His friends called for help but by the time his full name was pronounced, it was too late and unfortunately the boy gets  drowned.  Teacher asked Shyam the moral of the story. Shyam replied, “children with long names should never go near the well.”  Hope our politicians do not think on similar lines!

rajan.parulekar@yahoo.com