A Robbery and New Union Territories

The State of Delhi lost two former Chief Ministers within a span of a few weeks. Both women, both respected across party lines and loved by Dilliwalahs. Mrs Sheila Dikshit did more for Delhi in recent times than anyone else post Lutyens perhaps. The best tribute to her came from Karan Thapar when she lost elections to our man AK and had to relinquish the office of Chief Minister of Delhi, “She has left Delhi a much better city than what she had inherited”. Rest in peace Mrs Dikshit and Mrs Swaraj. StateOfDelhi salutes you.

A Rajya Sabha MP wants the powers that be to change the name of Delhi to Dilli. Apparently he has cited the examples of Cawnpore, Orrisa and Calcutta where the spellings were altered. This blogger too refers to the citizens of Delhi as Dilliwalahs and the old city as Dilli for that’s how it is in common parlance but change of names – God NO! Haven’t we had too many of such name changes? And what if there is no end to this name-change mockery for what will stop another elected representative half-a-century later wanting us to go back to naming our city Indraprastha? Well, that is if ‘elected representatives’ do not go extinct by that time and we only have ‘sponsored representatives’ (and no, this is not a dig at one Mr Ambani, please!).

Change of names robs cities  and places of their character, of a peculiar bonding that a city has with its dwellers, and of course costs one helluva lot (with GST collections threatening to stay low for a sustained period now – making Delhi ‘Dilli’ may not be financially prudent too).  While on the subject of robbery – we had a very interesting one in Delhi recently. A Quick Response Team (QRT) vehicle was stolen. Guess which department this QRT was attached to: Anti-auto-theft-squad (AATS) of west district of Delhi! Need one say more? Thankfully, the vehicle was found a few hours later – abandoned at Moti Nagar – some face-saving this for the sleuths.

Our elected representatives chose to carve out two new Union Territories. One of the prime reasons given whenever a new state or a Union Territory is created is ‘development’ and this time was no different. If ‘development’ is the prime reason then one wonders why our friend AK is not suggesting the bifurcation of state of Delhi in to two Union Territories to begin with. That ways his dream of AAP ruling two states or UTs has a better chance of being accomplished. Imagine if East Delhi is given the status of a UT and the Rest of Delhi is the other UT? East Delhi with over 20 lakh registered voters (almost thrice of those in UT of Chandigarh and a few times more people than the entire population of the new UT of Ladakh!) makes for a strong case. The Rest of Delhi can be better managed too. One could gag the Khan Market gang and JNU more effectively. Now whether these new UTs need to be with legislature or without can be left to majority party in the Parliament depending on how big a threat they take AK’s Aam Admi Party to be.

So our suggestion to that MP: Why just rest with a proposal to change of name – change the entire goddamned structure if you want to. You have the numbers, mate!

State Of Delhi Suggests: It’s been raining through the last fortnight. Monsoon is finally here. It’s time to celebrate the rains while they last and what better way to do it than to gobble up some pakoras. And while every mohalla, every colony of Delhi has a street vendor or a halwai who makes decent pakoras – there is no place better than Nauroji Nagar crossing to sample some lip smacking stuff. And the trick here is to try all kinds of pakoras that are on offer (this blogger hasn’t had the lotus-cucumber variant anywhere else!). Enjoy!