And now that the elections are over, I was happy to hear the elected representatives are eager to get down to work, “We have so much to do!” sighed a newly elected representative, “First I want to rename the street I live on after my father, the chowk at the end of the road after my late uncle, and the fish market after my grandfather!”

And as the elected representatives get ready to do their laborious work, I look out and see a committee of learned citizens, “This building and this and this and this!” exclaim members of the heritage committee as they walk down the roads.

The heritage committee move from building to building, their job, to identify old structures; they have no money to offer for repairs, they have no powers except trying to preserve a city’s heritage!

The question I ask here is, aren’t the old names and landmarks much, much more important than giving a dilapidated building just a heritage tag? Shouldn’t they have the powers to ask for the preserving of a name?

History doesn’t just belong to the present, it belongs to all the generations that were part of that street, or building, town or city.

While driving in America, and hearing strange sounding names I asked my host about them. “They were,“ he said, “names given by the original native Indians! Alabama, named after the Alibamu, and Indian tribe, Idaho, Illinois, Massachusetts, and hundreds of names, some so difficult to pronounce, but loaded with history!” America hasn’t changed those names.

Over hundreds of roads in Bombay, yes I didn’t say Mumbai, have been renamed.

But while you hold on to that thought, it’s not just the history of a name that is lost, but also our own personal history: With every street we have lived in, schooled in, come back memories of incidents and people, of not just our lives, but of the city then. I tell my children of the Christmases of Clare Road, where mostly Protestants once lived, about Sankli Street filled once with Anglo-Indian families, but it makes no sense saying this when the new name of the road, is Mirza Ghalib Road!

In India we seem to be afraid of history, so we take a giant brush and with hurried strokes erase all that reminds us of the past. “Hey members of the heritage committee! Look beyond the buildings, look beyond what you visually see, and see generations who are crying out saying they are part of this street and city.”

Let us learn to preserve history!

And if history reminds us of a colonial past, then let that past remind us that we are no more under anyone and be thankful for our freedom fighters!

And my dear newly elected representatives, you have won your seat to preserve the country, not destroy what went into the building of it..!

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