Like everyone, I’ve been following the news from India. I don’t have much to add to the narrative that hasn’t been said already. I did have one observation, though, and that’s that I noticed that all the news I’ve been reading refers to the city where the attacks took place as Mumbai. For a day or two, most stories clarified that this is the city formerly known as Bombay. But now they’ve stopped, because it’s just understood that we have internalized the new name and don’t need to be reminded anymore.
Mumbai has been known as such since 1996, but I confess, the name change never really took with me until now. But now I’ve heard Mumbai enough that I get it, and I probably won’t make the mistake of calling the city by its outdated name anymore. It’s funny how a tragedy can have the unintended effect of making us a little more cosmopolitan.
Now I need to get to work becoming fluent with the names Kolkata (Calcutta) and Bengaluru (Bangalore). But please, no more violence. I can do this on my own if I put my mind to it.
It’s the kind of story that’s too good to spoil with verification--or even attribution: It’s said that an interviewer once asked Mick Jagger what he’d do if the rock ‘n’ roll thing ever fizzled out. “Well,” he supposedly said, “I guess it would be pretty cool to be a travel writer.”
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