Gaon to gram

The virtual world got flooded with jokes, tweets and viral memes as the Haryana government decided to rename the capital’s hip and happening cousin Gurgaon to Gurugram.

The sprawling suburb outside Delhi dotted with skyscrapers and glistening malls, Gurgaon, has undergone a change of name. It will now be called Gurugram. Obviously, Twitter is not leaving a brilliant opportunity to poke fun at this feckless name change of the bustling ‘Millennium city’.

With tweets like #How would like to be called collectively, people of Gurugram Gramvasiyon Gurulog Grammars Gur naal ishq mitha oye hoye, #After Gurgaon, please change the name of Noida to No-Idea. Because people there have no idea about road sense and traffic signals to #Just heard that Gurgaon has been changed to Don’t come here, humourous trolls are being shared by netizens across the country.

However, looks like it’s only a historical makeover because Gurgaon, with a population of approx 1.7 million people, and a leading financial and industrial hub, a subcity of Delhi, in fact, had been Gurugram to begin with. The Haryana Government announced the decision and said it was the result of a long pending demand of the municipal corporation.

Announcing the decision, an official spokesman said the decision to change the name of Gurgaon had been taken on the basis of the representations received at several forums. He said Haryana was a historic land mentioned in the Bhagawad Gita and Gurgaon had been a great centre of learning, where Guru Dronacharya used to provide education to the Pandavas and Kauravas. The town derived its name from Guru Dronacharya; the village was given as ‘gurudakshina’ to him by his students, the Pandavas, and hence it came to be known as Gurugram. This name in course of time got distorted to Gurgaon. Therefore, the people of the area had been long demanding that Gurgaon be renamed as Gurugram.

Whether the new name will stick on the lips of the city’s residents, only time will tell, but the government decision has already set off buzz on social media for now.