Thursday, May 15, 2008

Thackeray's surname stinks of hypocrisy. It should be spelt as Thakre, the Marathi way

Numbed by Raj Thackeray’s rise, Shiv Sena is as clueless as those bimbos in blonde jokes. Only that these bimbos are not funny because they form a zombie army ready to rise and whine within seconds of a signal from Dadar.

Since Raj Thackeray’s Maharashtra Navnirman Sena has appropriated the plank of Marathi pride and every kind of assholism that Shiv Sena treated as its intellectual property, Sainiks are back scavenging for ideas in the detritus of dirty tricks dumped by Balasaaheb when he rode rough through Mumbai’s conscience for nearly three decades. Last week, Sainiks found an old, over-used trick called “Bombay To Mumbai In 10 minutes Flat.” Since Bombay turned Mumbai a long time ago, it was time to remove the word Bombay from our dictionary.

They splattered a publicity sign of textile brand Bombay Dyeing, which for God’s sake, is a brand name which does not belong to the city. It takes a lot to build a brand and cannot be changed because a political party hopes this change could change its electoral fortune. Next, they would want customs department to replace the label of Bombay Sapphire gin with that of Mumbai Sapphire. Sainiks vandalised the school Bombay Scottish and painted Mumbai Scottish on its walls. They betrayed their hidden hatred for one of their own. Raj Thackeray’s son went to Bombay Scottish, so did children of many other politicians who want Marathi kids to study in Marathi-medium schools. But that’s another story.

Then they went on to demand Bombay Stock Exchange be renamed Mumbai Stock Exchange, ombay High Court Mumbai High Court.


Sainiks also burned copies of Bombay Times, Times of India’s Mumbai city supplement. Their ire and fire was misplaced as even Bombay Times is datelined Mumbai and, like Bombay Dyeing, is a brand name; a masthead that came into being much before Mumbai came into circulation. But then Sainiks have never understood or believed in reason.

We have seen Bangalore, modern India’s brightest brand (one that went on to become a verb in the English language) turning into Bengaluru, Madras into Chennai and Calcutta into Kolkata. Most of these changes have been smooth, even if some people were not comfortable with this superfluous, mostly politically motivated idea of change. But no one ever forced New Calcutta Tailors to change to New Kolkata Tailor, or Madras Café to Chennai Café, or Bangalore Software Systems to Bengaluru Software Systems. Mostly because few cities in India have ochlocratic sick Sainiks.
That last name change: Orissa has become Odisha, thanks to Chief Minister Navin Patnaik, who could hardly pronounce Odisha or any other Oriya word till just a couple of years ago.

Charity begins at home. Amid this foofaraw of Mumbai getting messed up in this battle between two Senas, may I suggest a change beginning from the Thackeray home? Why not change the anglicised Thackeray to Thakre. After all, the main argument for changing Bombay to Mumbai has been a revitalised reassertion of Marathi pride and removal of the relics of Anglicisation of our culture. Thackeray is to Thakre what Bombay is to Mumbai. So dear Thackerays, become Thakres or sod off.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

boss, you were featured in HT!!

http://www.hindustantimes.com/StoryPage/StoryPage.aspx?id=644711cd-eaa5-48dd-ae00-65b194f0e4a5

Roy said...

I just stumbled at this by accident, but I(non-Indian) must say that since hearing of this guy I thought wow, I wonder if he is related to the English novelist Thackeray..

ravikantforscience said...

I completely envy your article, its people like you who are there to open people's eyes against these dirty politicians like Raj Thackeray and Bal Thackeray. 3 years down the line and they have done all the things like vandalizing public property and beating up people, but none of them done something to solve the problem and they hold migrants responsible all the time, the violent acts are only to win votes, for eg. railway exam issue could have been dealt by protesting against indian railway board not beating up students in exam. Start schemes like cycle to work rather than beating up migrants, start the 1 child in family scheme again. I saw J.V. Link road which was being made and the workforce was so small that it took so long to make that road and then politicians who undertake that work say that migrants steal the jobs but dont and them self dont use workforce efficiently. They have time to create problems for the word bombay or someone playing bhojpuri song but they dont have time to promote issues like education, infrastructure, use of more bicycles for less traffic, increasing the size and dimension of the city rather than beating up taxi drivers on the street.

I completely admire because by letting people know these truth you are saving our nation getting divided.
We curse australians for being racist with our indian students and today in mumbai some of these politicians are are being racist towards are own Indians.

Anonymous said...

the truth is raj thackeray comes from a family of traitors. his forefathers were the golams of Britishers thats how their surname got distorted. Raj thackeray wants to rule over bombay by regionalising bombay hence the name change and attacking anything western. RAJ THACKERAY IS A BLOODY SNAKE!

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