Come to think of it, not every place may be as popular but rarely is any place without a distinct cultural output of some kind though. We only need to look around. Aamir Khan starrer Piku revived memories of my train travel beyond Lucknow wherein I had first tasted ladoos of a different kind. Named after the non-descript town Sandila, the soft and paler country cousin of the glamorous boondi ladoo has lent an identity to this small town in Hardoi district in Uttar Pradesh. But for these ladoos, Sandila would have remained a dot on the map.
Not much is being done to either identify and establish, or revive and restore such distinct cultural identities of small towns and cities. Either crass commercialization has uprooted geographical indicators from their place of origin or overt homogenization of cities has erased such cultural identities. Take the case of Pratapgarh in Rajasthan. This small town is the birth place of that intricate gold-glass fused jewelry called thewa. Ironically, thewa has gone places but its birth place does not register in popular imagination any bit.
I am convinced that a little spark of madness on the part of the city administrators can turn things around. There is little doubt that tossing a cultural identity will only do good to the existence of a city. The myth of the dangling earring, the ubiquitous jhumka, lost in the street of Bareilly has remained in popular imagination for over half a century. Thanks to well-known lyricist Raja Mehndi Ali Khan who rhymed Bareilly into his melodious composition jhumka gira re bareilly ke bazaar me for the immensely popular film Mera Saya.
Stories about how bareilly was rhymed into the song abound on the internet, but noticeable is the fact that jhumka has finally caught the imagination of the Bareilly Development Authority in drawing plans to give shape to the city's mythical jhumka identity at its entrance by installing a replica of this piece of jewelry, 12-14 feet in height and 2.43 meter in diameter. Only by preserving the uniqueness of a place, real or imaginary, can the distinct character of cities be restored from overt homogenization.
More than being just 'smart', cities need cultural icons and not concrete structures to bond with its residents. For those bent upon renaming cities/places, there are secular ideas up for grabs!
First published in The Tribune, issue dated Sep 24, 2019, and The Hindu dated Oct 13, 2019.
