From Gurgawa, to Gurrgaon, to Grrrgaon, to Gurugram

What used to be Gurgaon has made a name for itself, literally. Or, rather, several names. When I moved into this suburb of Delhi 20 years ago, it was called Gurgaon, a gaon, or place, where gur, or jaggery, was sold.

It was a green-gold chequerboard of wheat and mustard fields, a pastoral idyll in which neelgai roamed and peacocks strutted.

Into this Eden entered a serpent in the guise of property developers who bought land from the farmers and turned it into real estate.

With the cash they got, the erstwhile farmers bought crates of IMFL and Maruti 800s, not necessarily in that order. They drank the IMFL, crashed the Marutis and had little to do after that but watch what had been their farmland transform almost overnight into a glittering Millennium City, with glitzy malls and bars as famous for their beer as their brawls.

Gurgaon became an IT and industrial hub, attracting talent and enterprise from not just across the country but across the world. Gurgawa, as the locals pronounced it, or Gurrgaon (the ‘Gurr' to rhyme with ‘purr') as the newly-arrived cosmopolitan sophisticates preferred to call it, no longer sold just ‘gur'.

It overtook Delhi as the culinary capital of India, its eateries and bistros dishing out everything from Kashmiri to Korean fare, from gourmet burgers to Chicken Manchurian a la Chinjabi.

But nothing sucks like success. Gurgaon grew at a pace too fast and furious for its own good. Towering condominiums and office blocks of glass and steel erupted out of the astonished earth amidst piles of garbage where pigs rooted, turning Millennium City into Smellenium Shitty.

Power cuts, water shortages, traffic snarls, potholes linked with sporadic patches of road threatened to turn Gurgaon into Grrrgaon, a breeding ground for angst and anger.

But now the new dispensation has given Gurgaon not just a new name — Gurugram — but also new hope. Gurugram — the place where a guru, or teacher, resides — is an apt name for an IT hub where the geek shall inherit the earth. Guru could also refer to Guru Dronacharya, after whom a local Metro station is named, and who is said to have been the resident sage of the place.

Linking 21st century IT to an ancient Vedic past, Gurugram seems set to face the brave new world of the future. Now it's up to Gurugram's chelas, its citizens, to ensure through civic-mindedness that their city lives up to its exalted name. Kyon ji? Done deal?