You might be still getting used to Mumbai, tethering on Bengaluru, grappling with Puducherry or not even know that Pune is Poona, but here is yet another geographical detail that you will now have to familiarise yourself with. The Parliament has passed the bill on changing Orissa’s name to Odisha and the language from Oriya to Odia.
A change which brings us back to a tremor of a suggestion made in the pre-CWG era of changing Delhi's name to its non-British cousin Dilli or Dehli.
Srikant Avi, who is an MBA student, thinks that with Orissa the name is being changed to its original one, which will not be the case with Delhi. “We call it Dilli in Hindi anyway. And like it’s with Paris, when people learn French, they get fascinated with Pari’s and call it that. Same could be with Delhi too,” he says.
Rishabh Chopra, working with the Happy Hands Foundation agrees. “For me, it’s still Bombay and will be. Changing names changes the character of the city and makes it difficult for everyone to associate with it. What matters is how you feel there, not what you call it,” he tells us.
Most think that the bid to change names of cities is politically motivated and done only to appease a certain section of people. Hitesh Chabbra, who works in an advertising agency, feels that it makes no difference to the people of the city. “People and their lifestyle remains the same even after the name change. It’s all a political gimmick,” he told us.