Though changing Gurgaon’s name to Gurugram will make no difference to my life, I’m going to pronounce it American-style: ‘gram’ to rhyme with ‘Sam’, not ‘aam’. Haryana’s government is changing ‘Gurgaon’ because it’s the modern-day site of Guru Dronacharya’s warfare-ashram, attended by the Mahabharata’s Pandavas and Kauravas. The one-gram-Guru, a friend sniggers, citing Dronacharya’s casteism, favouritism and nepotism. The only archery in Gurgaon these days are cupid’s bow-and-arrows, starting in the morning when the Guru Dronacharya Metro station (another artifice, telling you nothing geographically of where the train has reached) disgorges boys and girls rushing to the tech sweatshops in DLF’s cyberhub and to the corporate offices along the Golf Course road, which have contributed to making Gurgaon the ‘ATM of Haryana’; and continuing till night, when yuppies throng the micro-breweries that reportedly outnumber Bengaluru’s.

The RSS had already been using ‘Gurugram’ instead of Gurgaon in its address for a long time, and the Haryana government has now followed suit. Pic/PTI