National Highway 8 goes through Gurgaon, splicing it into two. On one side is what is often dismissed as “old Gurgaon”, with everything negative that old connotes — it has outlived its use and it won’t be long before it is forced to submit to modernity. On the other side, the new Gurgaon — to many of its over million residents, the “true” Gurgaon — also exists in a kind of alternate reality.
If you drive through any of the roads and alleys of Gurgaon on this side, you’ll instantaneously realise that this is a suburb where nomenclatures are not just important, they are paramount. Take a look at the names of the buildings — there’s Beverly and Belvedere, Wellington and Westend, Central Park and World Spa. And while only hibiscus and bougainvillea actually grow in this hot, dry city, the flowers that the buildings evoke are in distant meadows in foreign lands — camelias, magnolias, orchids.
It is a city that has, so far, successfully deluded itself that it is a first world nation.
And so, imagine the shock, when on Tuesday the Haryana government announced that Gurgaon is to be renamed Gurugram, a name that was, at least tonally, a perfect match to the sound of the collective groan it aroused.
In announcing the name change, a spokesperson for the Haryana government said: “Gurgaon is a historic land mentioned in the Bhagwat Gita and it had been a great centre of learning, where Guru Dronacharya used to provide education to the Pandavas and Kauravas.”
The town is supposed to have derived its name from Drona; as the village was given as “ gurudakshina ” to him by his students, the Pandavas, and therefore it became Gurugram. It has since been distorted to Gurgaon.
This return to a mythical past has, predictably, perplexed a majority of residents in new Gurgaon. This cut goes especially deep since the immigrant residents and government billboards have, at least for the last decade, referred to Gurgaon as the Millennium City. In the government’s defence though, it never specified which millennium.
“The name change is totally ridiculous and I really don’t know what the government is trying to achieve,” said Alok Mehra, who moved here from Sunnyvale, California, in 2005. “What kind of ‘development’ is this name change going to bring? Would the roads stop dissolving in the first rain? Would public transport improve? Will the 12-hour power cuts end? Instead of focussing on the real problems, it’s very unsettling that the government has decided to use its energy to change the name of the city.”
As soon as the announcement was made, social media did its part and provided some comic relief to the wounded citizens; the more popular jokes compared Gurugram to the popular photo sharing app, Instagram (“both are places where women get stalked”).
Others posted screenshots from Doordarshan’s Mahabharat with appropriate new-age comments, mocking the perennial traffic jams, rocketing school fees and the impunity with which women are molested. Everyone guffawed.
But it will be in filling, ‘Malibu Towne, Gurugram’ (true name) in airline ticket forms and e-commerce transactions that the full reality of the new name will hit its residents. It will be quite a while before one can say, ‘let’s party at Manhattan in Gurugram’ without feeling the acid burn of hipster shame.