BOLLYWOOD IS SO VULNERABLE!

A very ugly incident arose on Friday when Wake Up Sid (WUS) released across the country. The film, directed by debutant Ayan Mukerji and produced byKaran Johar, has several characters calling Mumbai by its old name, Bombay. Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, Raj Thackeray’s party, was furious with this and its members tried stopping the screening ofWUS at two theatres in South Mumbai and at a couple of places in Pune. Johar, fearing that the matter may go out of hand, immediately went to Thackeray’s Shivaji Park residence and apologized to him. He assured that he had no intention of hurting anyone’s sentiments and that he would add a disclaimer in the film in 2 days.

The incident created a furore and Raj Thackeray’s rivals perceived it differently, of course, with vested interests and Johar was made a scapegoat by all of them.

I discussed this issue with more than 50 people (many of them Maharashtrians) and not a single person felt that there is any harm in calling Mumbai as Bombay. Go to South Mumbai and many residing there still refer to the city asBombay. In fact, South Mumbai is often called SoBo (Bo is the short form of Bombay). Then there are so many organizations and companies whose name consist of ‘Bombay’. Bombay Stock Exchange, Bombay Blues (a famous chain of restaurants), Bombay Times, Bombay Parsi Punchayat, Bombay Catholic Sabha, Bombay Dyeing etc are the classic examples. The sunset point in Mahabaleshwar is called Bombay Point since decades. Jet Airways uses the code ‘BOM’ to refer to Mumbai. The funniest part of this whole incident-Raj Thackeray’s son Amit Thackeray studied in a reputed school called BOMBAY SCOTTISH! Ha ha ha!

It was equally shocking to know the quotes given by Raj Thackeray’s rivals. Maharashtra CM Ashok Chavan called the whole incident a publicity stunt. That is, all this drama was created so that WUS gets more audience. A stupid comment, in my opinion, asJohars has and will never resort to such tactics to market their films. Also, there was no need for Johar to do any kind of publicity stunt as WUS had already aroused lots of curiosity amongst youngsters. The film already witnessed massive advance bookings, even before the audiences learnt of this controversy. Shiv Sena spokesperson Sanjay Raut was of the view, “If he (Johar) really feels sorry about it, he should apologise to Maharashtra and the millions of Marathi manoos staying here”. Arre, who cares if Mumbai is called Bombay? People here are more interested in having a better infrastructure, traffic-free roads, organized transport system and sense of security. No one’s sentiments are going to hurt if anyone uses the word Bombay. BJP leader Kirti Somaiya claimed, “Nobody has the right to refer to it by the old name when it has already been renamed Mumbai”. Again, a senseless statement as there’s no law that makes calling a city by its old name illegal. One can fearlessly refer to Mumbai as Bombay, Kolkata as Calcutta, Bengalooru as Bangalore, Vadodra as Baroda, Thiruvananthapuram as Trivandrum, Chennai as Madras and also New York as New Amsterdam!

Raj Thackeray questions, “Why can’t people accept Mumbai if they can accept Chennai and Thiruvananthapuram?” But he should be told that people in these Southern cities don’t have to apologize to any tom, dick and harry if they use the old name of the city. And Thackeray has always been comparing with the Southern States. Last year he justified his signboard campaign (threatening shop owners to change their signboards into Marathi) by stating, “In Kerela and other South Indian states, all the signboards are written in their language, so why not the same in Maharashtra?” Maybe then Raj should make a comparison on all fronts. Kerela has high levels of literacy-why doesn’t he strive to attain the same in Maharashtra too? At least that’ll help the state. Changing the signboards to Marathi and revolting when someone uses the word Bombay is not going to help Mumbai progress even an inch.

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