Under A Rock
I was reading the current Time article on legal process outsourcing (LPO) to India when I noticed the mention of Mumbai, “formerly Bombay.” I’m embarrassed to admit that I had no idea Bombay changed it’s name; apparently I have been living under a rock. I initially attributed this to my current profession of stay-at-home mom. I can sing you every opening song to a kid’s show, from Dora, Sesame Street, Spongebob (sung with great gusto!) to any Disney show, but I don’t really hear about current events during the day. However, as I wikipedia-ed the name change, I found:
The name was officially changed to its Marathi pronunciation of Mumbai in 1995.
1995! I didn’t become a mom until 2002. How utterly embarrassing for me. I used to pride myself on being geographically literate, but quite frankly, the world has changed so drastically that it’s difficult to keep up. Have you seen a map of the former USSR, Africa or the Middle East lately? It’s not the same geography I learned in school twenty or even ten years ago. Here’s to a new hobby for this stay-at-home mom: keeping up with current events and studying world geography.
You might be surprised to know that the name of the city of Bangalore, the global hub of call-centres and outsourcing has been officially renamed to “Bengaluru”, the indigenous name. (-:
o man, this post totally made me laugh…i love the cartoon. yea, so much going on in the world - i don’t rely on sophisticated sources such as the New York Times, but rather find Google and Yahoo brings me the fascinating headlines - what’s Brittany wearing today, how many kids will Brangelina have, etc…in all seriousness, i think it’s great you have a new passon - i’ll send you an almanac. we have too many - my better half seems to collect them at random.
Anirudh, thanks for the info. Matt’s in Logistics and didn’t know, either, so this is helpful. I appreciate it!
You’re welcome. When I was in Taiwan, one of the executives at the flight desks asked me, “Sir, where would Mumbai be?” She was a flight desk executive!
Bombay was the anglicised name of the city, the Presidency Town, and therefore there was a grassroots movement to change the name to something “Maharashtrian” (Mumbai is the capital city of the Indian state of Maharashtra, literally meaning the Great Nation).
Best wishes,
–Anirudh