Mumbai as it is known today still has the reputation of being the best city in India. But what does that mean? Surely, this is based on a wide variety of criteria. Undoubtedly, we are truly ahead of the rest of India in most of these. We also boast of being a “world-class city”. But that is a very subjective term. One of the several and varied factors that a world-class city needs, and perhaps an oft-overlooked one, is street name signs. After all, as the city grows, it is impossible for an individual to know every street without proper signage. However, in this sphere, we are truly a third-world city.
A look at Bandra’s street name signs reads like a Shakespearean comedy of errors! Take St. Sebastian Road, for example. A keen eye would notice that there are not one, or two, or even three; but four name signboards on the street, each spelling the Saint’s name in a different way. And only one gets it correct. Perhaps you need to guess which one it is if you want to live on St. Sebastian Road.
Moving on, yet another Bandra street named after a Saint has its name “desecrated”. St. Roque Road has been mis-spelt (and for a long time, too) “St. Raque Road”, and this wrongly pronounced “rack”. And while the legibility of the street name sign has been almost obliterated with time, the error is plain to see.
Further hilarity ensues as one sees the fate of what is arguably one of Bandra’s best-known streets – Mount Mary Road. For the longest time, the street name sign had it mis-spelt “Mount Merry Road”. While being Merry is always a goal for most of us, it led to even stores in that area being named after “Merry” rather than “Mary”. Perhaps we should be thankful for having been spared the ignominy of it being unceremoniously re-named “Mount Marry Road”!
One of Bandra’s most interesting (and perhaps easily misspelt) streets is Tertullian Road. The name originates from Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus, an early Latin author from Carthage (present-day Tunisia) in the Roman Empire. Tertullian was also known as the father of Latin Christianity, and the founder of Western theology. Today, the street name sign bearing this name has been corrupted to “Turtollium Road” (named perhaps in honour of one of the fictional Roman garrisons in Gaul, as I recall so many of them in the Asterix comics)! Ironically, and perhaps, fortunately, the street name sign lies right next to another sign put up by the local ALM, that bears its correct name, spelt as Tertullian Road. So to Quintus Septimius Florens Tertullianus, we perhaps, in Latin, owe a “mea culpa, mea culpa, mea máxima culpa”.
Besides these, there are several streets in Bandra that do not have signage at all. Pereira Road, connecting Mount Mary Road to HK Bhabha Road at Bandstand is one of them. Often confused as being a stretch of Mount Mary Road, however, it is very distinct and separately named. Convent Road is another road that is devoid of signage, and in fact, residents have put up home-made signs to mark their road.
To many, accurate street signage is an irrelevant concept. Thanks to apathy and indifference, combined with ignorance, this is seen to be “no big deal” in this day and age. Yet this seemingly insignificant concept goes a long way in persevering not only local history and heritage but also goes towards giving us what we truly aspire to – living in a world-class neighbourhood. After all, how are you supposed to get somewhere, when you don’t know where you are truly going?!
