Apollo Bunder is a port, not a point. With that point, Jamnadas Mehta, a former corporator of the city, had laughed off in 1940, a proposal to rename Apollo Bunder as Nariman Point.
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It was in the 1960s that Bombay’s renaming frenzy began as an attempt to weed out colonial names. If a councillor once tabled a resolution to change the name of Dadar’s Khodadad Circle to Lokmanya Tilak Chowk as he thought ‘Khodadad’ — named after Khodadad Irani, a Parsi local — was the name of a foreigner, a similar misinterpretation had led some councillors to propose to change the name of Laburnum Road. Later, in the 1990s, there was talk of changing the name of Hill Road to Ramdas Nayak Road as many thought the former was the name of a British officer.
And today, the intellectuals who had wondered if we will start naming street lamps and walls after we run out of roads to rename, won’t be surprised that some city politicians are naming potholes after rivals.
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