Waste Bengal or Rest Bengal? Mamata Banerjee should discuss new names with ML Khattar

Tell the cynics to take a break. There’s so much to a name. The Bard, wherever he is, got it all horribly wrong when he said a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. He should speak to Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar to understand why. [caption id=“attachment_2789432” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] File image of West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee. PTI[/caption] Gurgaon is so much a better place to live after bring named Gurugram — forget the traffic jams, roads under water after a spell of shower or the crime rate; these are minor distractions in the great story of a city taking the magnificent leap through time and space. Now that there is an effort to change the name of West Bengal, it should be welcomed with enthusiasm. Banga, Bangla or whatever they come up with will certainly cause a magical transformation in Mamata Banerjee’s state. Is there a hint of sarcasm in the story thus far? If so, it is unintended. Coming back to names, Bombay was prosaic, Mumbai is so lyrical. Madras was heavy on the tongue, Chennai rolls off it so smoothly; Calcutta just had one ’t’ too many and the ‘u’ just didn’t make sense, Kolkata carries no such unnecessary weight. Bangalore was so ‘phoren’ and Bengaluru sounds so grounded. There’s nothing wrong if Mamata_di_ wants to call West Bengal by another name. As changing names go, this one was long overdue. Some had started calling the state Waste Bengal; some had read too much into the work culture of the state and called it Rest Bengal, and others were tempted to call it Bandh Bengal. Even the Leftists, who made bandhs as much a part of everyday life as bureaucratic lethargy — and virtually turned so many areas of the state unproductive — are not averse to a new name. Losing power after 34 years of misrule, they would like to forget the past, the name of the state included, and make a fresh beginning. The thought appears to have a very mundane origin though: It’s the position of ‘W’ in the alphabet. “Since the name of the state starts with a W, our representatives get to speak only at the end of any function when most of the audience has left. To do away with the problem, the chief minister has suggested the name be changed,” a minister of the state said some time ago. A genuine problem indeed! Imagine ‘Best Bengal’ instead of ‘West Bengal’. It would have sounded awful for sure but would have solved this problem with the alphabetical order easily. Now that the move is afoot, expect people to be creative and swing between the silly and the sublime. Some names have come up already. Best Bengal is one of them. Some have suggested, in jest of course, Mamtakhand, Mamatapur and Mamataland. One person has come with ‘Bekaristan’ (Land of the unemployed) and another with ‘Dadaland’. The latter needs no elaboration. West Bengal’s association with Sourav Ganguly is well-known. Rest assured, the brilliant collective Bengali genius will certainly come up with something nice — a name that would encapsulate the greatness of the state and its rich traditions. The name change may have unintended consequences, though, especially for Uttar Pradesh. When Bengal moves out of the bottom of the alphabetical league, it will leave Uttar Pradesh holding that dubious position. Surely, Akhilesh Yadav will think of something. If he fails to get imaginative, there’s help at hand. He can drive down to Haryana and consult his counterpart Khattar. Actually, if weighed down by confusion, Mamata_di_ could also do that.