Pomposity and the great game of the Land...Amitabh Bacchan.

Recently, Amitabh Bacchan bought a piece of land in Daulatpur- U.P where he'll be building a girls-school and christened it ‘Aishwarya Girls school'.

(http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/2728101.cms)

The school- as it was originally supposed to be- was not named after Harivanshray Bacchan, but named after Aish. This was surprising. Surprising considering that Amar Singh would have been the next most obvious choice after Harivanshrai Bacchan. But then again, he was present at the inauguration ceremony alongwith a few other seasoned politicians, thereby quashing all the doubts about this inauguration ceremony had a tinge of Politics to it. There wasn’t a mere tinge, but a whole ring of Politics to this name game.

Naming of public places or other such places of importance has always been an interesting issue. In India, it’s gotta do a lot with culture. Traditionally, public places, places of importance, are always named after someone who’s passed away. It’s been a sort of a pre-condition: You won’t have any public place named after you, till you are dead. This is because, for some reason, Indian tradition holds it inauspicious to name a public place after a living person. But this’s no longer the case.

Other than that condition, of you necessarily having to be dead to have a public place named after you, which admittedly is rather tough ask, the whole naming business was remarkably easy. Like… all you had to was become a PM without an adequate mandate, undermine the country’s defence, ruin the backbone of the economy, botch up a war, and you’d have it made. You’d have a whole slew of schools, colleges, public projects, institutions, roads and corridors of power named after you, thereby assuring you a significant place in public memory and inscribing your name in the annals of History.

But that’s past. Doing anything of that order is tremendously difficult in these times. Whatever you do, the economy grows at 8%. You make the most abominable piece of pabulum as TV serial and that too goes on to shatter the TRP records. Times are indeed tough for anyone to actually have a place of public importance named after himself or his kith and kin.

Which is precisely why, you know, you gotta give it to Amitabh. He did it. This is how Amitabh would’ve advice us about how he managed to do it: Ask Amar Singh to illegally to allot you a piece of agricultural land in Barabanki in UP. Eye a piece of agricultural land in Pune which is only available to a farmer. Show the land in UP as a proof that you are a farmer. Let the court decide if your owning the land in UP as farmer was legal. Thereafter let the court cancel the allotment suggesting you are a trickster. Then, buy another piece of land in Daulatpur- UP to build a school. Then contend that your sole intention behind buying the agricultural land in Barabanki- which unfortunately was taken away by court- was to build a girls’ school, which now you are compelled to build in Daulutpur. And name that after your glorious, exalted daughter-in-law, in case you too think your son is a sucker.

Thus, demonstrating that he and Aishwarya both are pompous, puffed-up, conniving twats who think the collective IQ of Indians is that of the symbol of Samajwadi party- the bicycle. Which is why, y’e know, you gotta give it to him and Aishwarya. They did it. Seriously folks, if there’s any one who deserves to have his/her name etched on a school after Harshad Mehta, Ketan Parekh, Bhujhbal, Pawar, Vilasrao, Telgi, Bharat Shah, Qutarocchi, Charles Shobhraj, Pramod Mahajan etc, it’s gotta be Amar Singh…no wait…Aishwarya Mulayam Singh. No!…. Aishwarya Amar Singh, no one sec…Aishwarya Abhishek Bacchan…Wait-a-minute…Yea, sure. Got a bit confused actually, just took Amar Singh’s statement that "Aishwarya is our (UP’s) bahuu" a bit too literally.

Amitabh and Aisharwaya aren’t the only ones though, wallowing in such a grandiloquent display of pomp and self-inflation. Mayawati has ordered to build her statues alongside Babasaheb Ambedkar and Kanshi Ram. The statue-building exercise is being conducted on a war-footing. The narcissist-ic steak of etching your name on public places is to be witnessed in a few other cases as well. Roads in UP have been named after Raj Babbar and his wife. Akhilesh Das, the ex-mayor named an entire locality as ‘Akhilesh Das Nagar’.

Looking at the affairs in UP, I gotta admit that not only can you be alive while etching your name on places of importance; you can be thoroughly worthy of doing the same. Perhaps as worthy as the great personality whose family had a blooming great relationship with the Bacchans at one time?