Castles in the Air

Are the names of Pune’s new buildings for real? Or do they reflect an alternate reality?

If a visitor to Pune were to judge the state of mind of its citizens by how their new homes are being named, he is bound to be confused. First, the visitor would think that the people of this city are in a chronic state of nostalgia for some kind of rural idyll. Not the Indian rural idyll, mind you. It’s the rolling pastoral English countryside that the Puneri seems to be hankering for, if new building names are an indicator. Older homes with names like Tarangan, Sharayu Smruti, or Mayurban are being overshadowed, quite literally, by towering blocks of cement, incongruously named Babbling Brook or Star-lit Heaven. On-the-ground, as they say, the buildings blot out your chances of seeing a single star, but then you can go to H…the Other Place.

Today’s canny builder isn’t going to use words like smriti-writi. With his finger on the pulse of the Puneri, he comes up with Meadow Memories. Appropriately named, one must say, considering that the building comes up on what was once a meadow and is now just a fast-fading memory.

It’s an alternate reality we’re creating, here in Pune. While we turn our back on the Mulla-Mutha and drain and choke every lake and pond in the city, we indulge in whimsy, christening our apartment blocks after all manner of waterbodies: brooks, torrents, rivers and even the Pacific. While we don’t care tuppence (no paisa-waisa – it’s pennies in here) for the city’s birds and animals, we go cuckoo with names like Thrush’s Call and Beaver Residency (huh?). While we drown the perfume of the Gagan Jai with exhaust fumes and are blind to the blazing Pangara as we drive ferociously past, we grow buildings named Fragrance Supreme and Geranium Gardens and Wonder Woods.

In continuation of the British theme, a lot of Pune loves the word Residency – it creates the illusion that we’re permanently at some sort of gracious English tea-party, and never mind if it’s Ratnakar Residency or Deshpande Residency.

One wonders whether there is a panel of well-paid (or maybe under-paid) wordsmiths (or hacks), busy at their desks, churning out names rich in imagery from the English landscape – Brook, Dale, Hill, River, Highland, Pasture, Daffodil, Primrose, Thrush, Beaver, Willow, Valley, even Camelot and Balmoral…till the visitor wonders whether he’s in the right city, even the right continent. Speaking of which, French words are all the rage too – Jardin and Monte and Verte and Palais and Bijou…and if nothing else, De This and La That.

The other thing that a visitor to Pune would wonder about is our turn of phrase (or lack thereof) while naming our homes. The combinations and juxtapositions are bound to baffle. What would this visitor do with, say: Profile Garnet. Or Pentium Elite. Or Prestige Serene, or Status Height, or Apex Tranquil, or simply: Radium Paradise. Go figure, Visitor.

There’s nothing we can do about this name business, really. Builders confidently say that such names attract the ‘top spenders’ (read Mumbai and NRI buyers) and if you don’t like it, they say - with their characteristic shrug that makes you think that somehow your money’s not good enough - you can go stay in an apartment with some boring old-fashioned name. Meanwhile they’ll promote more schemes with fancy themes.

Gone are the days when the city’s house names reflected the preoccupations of the era that they were built in. Coming to think of it, it may not be such a bad thing – because if today we do get real, we’d have to name our buildings Hill Destruct or Lake Fill or Fell Trees or Tottering Heights. That wouldn’t do for posterity, would it?

There is one small consolation in this fancy names folly. A byproduct industry that it generates is a game that you can play. When you’re driving through the city, especially its suburbs, and your kids are fighting and whining in the back seat, switch them on to the new game: Each child has to write down all the building names that he or she doesn’t understand. The one with the longest list wins first prize, the one with the bizarre-most name gets second prize and so on. You’ll be surprised how busy they’ll get in the back seat. They’ll also grow up with a better vocabulary and learn to spell well; of course, their grammar may get really shaky, but then they could get high-paid jobs naming new buildings. It’s a win-win situation.

We can laugh, but at the end of it all, it isn’t very easy for the actual inhabitants of these Flights of Fancy in La-La Land. Try getting a local courier company, or a home-delivery boy, to understand, say, Verdant Odyssey. If you succeed, you go to the next level: Get the lady at BSNL Directory Assistance to understand Cote d’Azur. We have tried it and failed, as we were told firmly: "Coimbatore cha number tumhala 183 kadun milel."

It’s no laughing matter. There are fears that residents of such places may end up having to be hospitalized for starvation, since supplies of food, cooking gas and medicines may not be delivered to their Meadows and Castles, as they are unlikely to be able to convey their building names on the phone to the supplies people.

It’s very difficult on the service providers too: A postman was heard mumbling recently, after he’d figured out the name of a new building called Reverence Haiku: "Punn aisa naamich deta hai Kaiku?"

Good question.