bombay

I was in Bombay for an uncle's wedding between the 28th and the 30th. (Since I have never been to Bombay before, none of my previous entries would have started like this.) (Refer to my previous entry if you don't get why I specify this.) (I like the name "Bombay" infinitely better than "Mumbai". If you're offended by this, I'm glad.) (Chains of parenthetical notes seems a novel concept.) As a prefatory remark to the ridiculously brief account of our trip to this wonderful city that follows, I will emphasize, as I have on so many occasions, that I absolutely loathe and abhor the pointless changes the various state governments have made in recent years to the names of certain places in India. You can't change the names of cities and people as you would diapers - they are too big a part of their identities. How disappointed any rational person would feel, if he suddenly learned that London, New York, Chicago, Paris, etc. had been renamed! The cities would have changed a lot more in your eyes than just in their names. So why do people allow the useless government to do the same with the names of Indian cities? These are the proper and/or original names of these wonderful Indian cities: Bombay, Madras, Calcutta, Pondicherry, and Bangalore. Try saying them aloud. There's something refreshingly euphonic about these names - classy, elegant, and easy to pronounce. They suggest contentment, freshness, and activity. Now say, "Mumbai", "Chennai", "Kolkata", "Pudducherry", and "Bengaluru". There's something stultifyingly lethargic about how these names sound - you're reminded of bad traffic, pollution, stagnation, and super-hot summer afternoons. Feel free to add to this list any name I may have omitted to mention. And oh - West Bengal will always be West Bengal - not the nauseating, dissonant thing it's officially been renamed to. It's frustrating how the IQs of all Indian politicians that (I say "that" and not "who" because they're subhuman scum) have ever lived (with the exception of the current Prime Minister) epically fail to add up to a non-negative number. By way of controlling this country's population, might I suggest extirpating every Indian politician who still dares to breathe?

The trip was good. I liked the Imperial twin towers the best. They're currently India's tallest buildings. We also saw Mukesh Ambani's 27-storied house named "Antilla". It looks abominable. And I've learned that Mukesh Ambani, because of some silly superstition, has decided not to move into this house. Poor chap has been forced to remain in his modest 14-storied house. After hearing this, I've decided that M.A. isn't very intelligent at all. As stupid as he looks, to be sure. Why would you spend the equivalent of two billion U.S. dollars on a house that you're not even going to move into? Shouldn't he have accounted for all the supersitious nonsense before constructing the house?

This brings me to the inevitable moral question. Was M.A. justified in building such a large house? I would usually defend a person's right to spend his money in any way he pleases, but something about this profligacy strikes me as unnecessary. I won't say it's because he hurt the feelings of all the poor people who live in the neighborhood - feelings are irrelevant. And he wouldn't have given all that money to charity anyway, so quit whining. So to conclude, it was immoral of him to build that house - not because it's so expensive, but because its purpose was to draw attention to his wealth. Twenty-seven stories? Even if you can afford something like that, it's ridiculous to believe that you and your family alone would be able to use all that space. That said, he still owns it. So the poor people around have no right to pull a Noam Chomsky on him.