Three cheers for 'Udisha'

“A rose by any other name would smell just as well”, they say. But I have my doubts. Every time somebody spells or pronounces my beloved Odisha as Orissa or Udisha, I get worked up. I was naturally thrilled when the Union Cabinet approved the Odisha government proposal to rename the state and its official language.

But to my consternation, I find that not every Odia shares my jubilation. Many feel this is much ado about nothing. “Do you seriously believe any outsider to start calling the state Odisha hereafter?”, asked a friend. “Odias have never really distinguished between ‘sa’ and ‘sha’ in their pronunciation. So, what is the big deal?”, queried another, who would rather have the state’s name pronounced as Odisa.

Year ago, I remember seething with rage when an anchor on good old Doordarshan made the announcement that the next programme was the Oriya (not Odia as it is now set to become) film “Niraba Jhada”, pronouncing the name in a way that made the second word – meaning storm – mean human shit.

Storm in a cup? Not when you are at the receiving end of an endless series of howlers, making you wonder at times if there is a pattern to it. Television news anchors would take great pains to pronounce the most tongue-twisting of names – be they Tamil, Tibetan, French, Spanish or whatever – correctly. But when it came to an Odia name, they would make sure that they mispronounce it. And thus, ‘Kandhamal’ would become ‘Khandamal’, ‘Swain’ ‘Swine’ and so on.

Ironically, the man responsible for getting the Centre’s nod for correction of the official name of the state and its language has left the television anchors far, far behind when it comes to mispronouncing Odia names. He has regaled crowds by turning Baripada, the headquarters of Mayurbhanj district, into the rural woman’s favourite term of abuse reserved for men in villages of coastal Odisha. But to give the devil his due, it was he – and not the supposedly quintessential Odia Chief Minister, who also ruled the state for three terms – who managed to do the unthinkable - getting a seemingly hostile UPA government to endorse the change of name. Perhaps aware of the repercussions of his move, he has even stopped pronouncing his state as Udisha as he used to do till a few months before the last elections.

I have always felt very strongly about misspelling or mispronunciation of names. I get terribly irritated each time somebody writes my name as Sandeep Sahoo, Sundeep Sahoo or Sandip Sahoo, even when s/he is merely copying from a document which has my name spelt correctly. So, I was a little amused when the change of name of the state and its language led to a furious debate about the desirability of such a change in much of the national media, which is usually very reticent about giving space to Odisha and Odias. I don’t remember any such debate when Bombay was renamed Mumbai, Madras became Chennai, Calcutta Kolkata and so on.

If the preceding paragraphs smell of a persecution complex and sound too parochial or jingoistic, here is something that should absolve me of all these sins. Even as I hate somebody mispronouncing my name, that of my state or my language, I know for sure that we Odias will continue to pronounce Odisha as Odisa, as my good friend had rightly pointed out, long after the cabinet decision gets formal parliamentary approval. And the rest of the world will continue to pronounce Odisha as Orissa or Udisha. Three cheers for Udisha!!!