How to mangle names and get rich

Somewhere in Mumbai there is a magical land called CMF By NothingIt may be an enchanted world like the Land of Oz though you will never find out It is almost impossible to meet anyone who has been to CMF By Nothing Perhaps you can get there through an invisible door between two platforms Harry Potter style but no one has found that eitherHowever you can buy a ticket to CMF By Nothing because it definitely has a station To get there you can start from a Metro station like Dahisar or Malad on the Yellow Line and buy a ticket to Andheri West En route suddenly you will be in the land of CMF By NothingEven on the platform of CMF By Nothing you will not see anything magical When you descend to ground level you will find yourself instead in a historic place called GoregaonYou will also note that Goregaonrsquos name has been changed to mdash CMF By Nothing Goregaon Its new name is CMF By Nothing Goregaon Since that is a mouthful many passengers may be heard asking for a ticket to ldquoNothing GoregaonrdquoOther mangled stations have started popping up along other Metro lines For example on the Blue Line that runs from Ghatkopar to Versova there is the town of Fevicol named after a viscous glutinous liquid with terrifying adhesive properties At ground level you will realise that you are actually in the historic precinct of Marol which alas the sophisticated people of Mumbai consider a suburban dump with a few garages restaurants and metalworksLetrsquos talk about Bombai Click the QR code above to join my WhatsApp group to share your Bombai stories for my bookmdashand perhaps answer some of my Bombai questionsThe selling of station names is coming through as a bonanza in the cityrsquos pilot project to see how many unexpected things in Mumbai can be sold for moneyIn 2022 the Mumbai Metro Rail Corporation Limited breathlessly announced that it had made a whopping R216 crore by selling the names of five stations on the Yellow Line Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus was sold to Kotak Mahindra Bank the Siddhivinayak Metro Station went to ICICI Lombard Churchgate and Hutatma Chowk Metro stations are now the Life Insurance Corporationrsquos to meddle withThese companies may now append their names to the stationrsquos hear it said in train announcements and shown on station mapsWhatrsquos so wrong with selling a stationrsquos name After all the more nonticket revenue a Metro earns the cheaper its services will be Careful child do not underestimate the power of greed The company makes money by raising not lowering pricesBut there is an overwhelming reason for leaving place names alone their purpose is to help people get around without losing their souls and sanity Serpentine names not only take up space on display boards forcing smaller font sizes but they are easy to misspell making a Google search a nightmare They are a mess to pronounce and will eventually be abbreviated to something crisp and meaninglessA name must last over generations But a name that belongs to a corporation will change when the corporationrsquos budget or its priorities change Fevicol Marol might turn overnight into Maganlal Chikki Marol All the boards will have to be repainted So many new contracts to be issuedMost importantly selling names trivialises their histories and stories Marol once Maroli was a bustling hub built between 1189 and 1310 CE by the Yadavas of Devgiri the first rulers to make Marathi their court language It existed long before Mumbai and once accounted for a tenth of its population What a wretched ending for such a noble rich story to be married to an industrial glueGoregaon originally Ghodegaon was once famous as a market for horses during the time of Chhatrapati Shivaji Surely it deserves better than a capricious Londonbased electronics shop called The Nothing Company founded by a ChineseWhy stop at station names Mumbai is full of other candidate names all lined up to be mutilated by the highest bidder To qualify it must be a name that people say over and over throughout the day And second it must be cripplingly long forcing people to abbreviate it so that eventually they are down to the first few syllables namely the companyrsquos name It might have been Marol but now itrsquos FevicolIf Metro stations can be auctioned off why not roads Why not the Coastal Road One day letrsquos say Shree Precoated Steels buys it and it is reborn as Shree Precoated Steels Dharmveer Swarajya Rakshak Chhatrapati Sambhaji Maharaj Coastal Road Two years later it is just called PrecoatedThere is no reason why Mumbairsquos iconic foods should be spared Perhaps Vada Pav will soon be sold as JK Cements Vada PavAny dosa with added ghee will be listed as Castrol Ghee DosasPao bhajis will be branded as Lovable Lingerie Pav Bhaji or else face heavy finesThe day may come when you could monetise your own mother by selling her name to a corporation Every time she visits the market her friends and others will call out joyously ldquoThere she is again Amchi Simplex Castings Lakshmibai ali rerdquoYou can reach C Y Gopinath at cygopigmailcomSend your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper