Jun. 10th, 2011 03:54 pm
Bhaji by any other name
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muckefuckWhen last I went to Bombay Grill, I remarked on the fact that their awning was down and was told, "Sir, you are one of only two men to say something." Yesterday it was back up...but something was a little different. I first noticed that there was no "y", and only then noticed that "Bombay" had become "Mumbai". When I sat down, I saw the same change effected on the menus of well, so I thought I had to say something.
"Did Shiv Sena make you change the name?" I asked roguishly.
They were on my mind because I'm about halfway through Rohinton Mistry's Family matters. (It's about the struggle of a woman with a full house to take care of her ailing father, and the fault lines this exposes between her, her spouse, and her siblings; the time seemed right.) The setting is Bombay in the late 90s when Shiv Sena governed Maharashtra in coalition with the BJP so there's a lot of complaining about their fanaticism from the predominately Parsi protagonists.
I don't think the shy white-haired manager knows what to make of my jibes and overtures. He muttered agreement, which makes me wonder if he even understood what I was suggesting. It is curious why they should follow suit only now, a decade-and-a-half after the name of the city was officially changed, when they haven't even been in business two years. Maybe they were concerned "Mumbai" would have no resonance for Americans and only belatedly realised their mistake? (This is the North Shore, after all, a haven for the painfully ethnically aware.)
"Did Shiv Sena make you change the name?" I asked roguishly.
They were on my mind because I'm about halfway through Rohinton Mistry's Family matters. (It's about the struggle of a woman with a full house to take care of her ailing father, and the fault lines this exposes between her, her spouse, and her siblings; the time seemed right.) The setting is Bombay in the late 90s when Shiv Sena governed Maharashtra in coalition with the BJP so there's a lot of complaining about their fanaticism from the predominately Parsi protagonists.
I don't think the shy white-haired manager knows what to make of my jibes and overtures. He muttered agreement, which makes me wonder if he even understood what I was suggesting. It is curious why they should follow suit only now, a decade-and-a-half after the name of the city was officially changed, when they haven't even been in business two years. Maybe they were concerned "Mumbai" would have no resonance for Americans and only belatedly realised their mistake? (This is the North Shore, after all, a haven for the painfully ethnically aware.)