Corporations are bidding for naming rights on Mumbai’s Metro stations and prefixing their names to them. I say, why stop there?
There is no reason why Mumbai’s iconic foods should be spared. Perhaps Vada Pav will soon be sold as JK Cements Vada Pav. Illustration by C Y Gopinath using AI
Somewhere in Mumbai there is a magical land called CMF By Nothing.
It 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 either.
However, 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 Nothing.
Even 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 Goregaon.
You will also note that Goregaon’s name has been changed to — 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 “Nothing Goregaon”.
Other mangled stations have started popping up along other Metro lines. For exam-ple, on the Blue Line that runs from Ghatkopar to Versova, there is the town of Fevi-col, 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 metalworks.
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The selling of station names is coming through as a bonanza in the city’s pilot project to see how many unexpected things in Mumbai can be sold for money.
In 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 Corporation’s to meddle with.
The-se companies may now append their names to the station’s, hear it said in train announcements, and shown on station maps.
What’s so wrong with selling a station’s name? After all, the more non-ticket 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, prices.
But 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 meaningless.
A name must last over generations. But a name that belongs to a corporation will change when the corporation’s 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 issued.
Most 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 glue.
Goregaon, originally Ghodegaon, was once famous as a market for horses during the time of Chhatrapati Shivaji. Surely it deserves better than a capricious London-based electronics shop called The Nothing Company, founded by a Chinese?
Why 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 company’s name. It might have been Marol, but now it’s Fevicol.
If Metro stations can be auctioned off, why not roads? Why not the Coastal Road? One day, let’s 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 Precoated.
There is no reason why Mumbai’s iconic foods should be spared. Perhaps Vada Pav will soon be sold as JK Cements Vada Pav.
Any dosa with added ghee will be listed as Castrol Ghee Dosas.
Pao bhajis will be branded as Lovable Lingerie Pav Bhaji, or else face heavy fines.
The 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: “There she is again! Amchi Simplex Castings Lakshmibai ali re!”
You can reach C Y Gopinath at cygopi@gmail.com
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The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper.
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