What's In a Name?

A typical street scene in downtown Calcutta.

In ancient times, as the Hindu legend goes, when the goddess Kali died her royal consort Lord Shiva was so saddened that he picked up her body, placed it on his shoulders, and began dancing. He intended to destroy the world with his dance such was his despair over Kali’s death. The other gods realized Shiva must be stopped and called on the great protector Lord Vishnu to save the day. Vishnu sent his famed chakra, or flying disc, hurtling towards the dancing Shiva. The chakra cleaved Kali’s body into 52 pieces. Kali’s toe, as legend has it, landed on a spot along the Hooghly River—a tributary of the holy Ganges—in present-day Bengal. A temple was dedicated on that spot and a village grew up around the temple. The village was named Kalikata. And in time, that village would grow into one of the largest cities in the world and would serve for more than 200 years as the administrative capital of the British East India Company.

The city was Calcutta, an Anglicization of Kalikata. In the late 1990s, the name Calcutta was changed to Kolkata, as India went through a pique of cultural reassertion, renaming cities and streets with handles that hearkened back to the Subcontinent’s native tongues. Bombay became Mumbai. Madras turned to Chennai. New Delhi dropped the “New” (and Old Delhi became a historical enclave within the larger city).

As a consequence, you can tell a person’s familiarity with a given city in India based on which name they use for that city. Most people both in and out of India call Mumbai by that modern name. But true natives of that place still call it Bombay. It is the same with Kochi, Kerala’s biggest city. Outsiders refer to it the way they see it printed on tourist maps. But Keralites all call it Cochin. An even more pronounced phenomenon surrounds Kerala’s capital Thiruvananthapuram. (Try to say it; I can’t.) It used to be called Trivandrum, and that is what most Westerners and Indians from other states call it. But proud Malayalis love to babble out the name Thiruvananthapuram because they are the only ones in the world who can say it correctly.

In a growing sense of familiarity, then, I have found myself referring to Kolkata this second time around as Calcutta. Despite what maps and newspapers would have you believe, Calcutta is still very much Calcutta to those who live here. Kolkata is used on all official signage. You see it stenciled on the Metro and sewn onto policemen’s uniforms. But nobody around here says that name.

When the visa official interviewed us the other day, he asked, “When did you first arrive in Calcutta?”

When our guesthouse manager met with us to discuss our stay, she said, “And how do you find Calcutta?”

When we visited the ATI office, Sangeeta, our old trainer, said smilingly, “Welcome back to Calcutta.”

I have been surprised, indeed, to feel welcome back here. It was this city, after all, that intimidated Jenna and I so much back in September. So different it was from anything we had ever experienced. So rambunctiously celebratory of all its human excess that shops and restaurants, barbers and bathrooms literally spill out into the streets and all manner of human business is conducted in the open under the sun.

Six months ago we could barely take it. It was Kolkata, with all the foreignness and cultural difference that name suggests.

Now, is a different feeling altogether we get. Jenna commented the other day, “It feels dead out here,” as we walked to the Metro stop. Indeed, the avenues appeared wider than I remembered. The people seemed less hurried and numerous. The sky was bluer, the wind cooler, and the trees literally greener.

I will allow, of course, for the change in the seasons. In September, the tail end of the monsoon season made Kolkata’s weather damp and humid. And the city may have seemed a bit livelier for the impending durga puja, the biggest public holiday of the year.

Yet, it was not just the exterior changes I noted but the interior ones as well. I felt more at-ease, more comfortable. Lord, more at home. I found myself both understanding and anticipating the challenges of the city. This time around, I carry loose change in my pocket to give to the beggars I know I will encounter. This time around, my appetite is piqued by the smells I get from the many roadside stands simmering dahl and grilling chapattis. This time around, I find it not difficult at all to haggle over a mere 10-rupee difference in the price of a street map.

In all the little ways that a visitor can show his growing familiarity with a city, I have found many in these first few days back in Calcutta. Maybe the most noteworthy, though, is what I actually call it.