WANTED: Official memorabilia of Bangalore International Airport

A teenager from Poland sent me an email today,

Dear Friend, My name is *******. I am sixteen years old and I am from Poland. I like planes and flying very much. My dream is to become a pilot in future. I send you and your airport big regards, and I have got a request: could you send me some official gadgets of your airport like pen, pins e.t.c.? I would be more than happy if you could do this Best wishes from Poland ******, my address, Debica Poland

I am sure he has Googled for Bangalore International Airport and reached Karnataka.com. I started that page because our infrastructure projects are nothing but a slippery soap. Sadly, it is not funny. In Karnataka projects took off again under HDK‘s regime (so will he continue after October 3rd, 2007? Will he or will he not? Yes..hmmm..no…aaah..yes, nah! no. Oh, I just give up guessing)

Now, getting back to the teenager’s email. Alas, he doesn’t know how complex his question is. Reasons being,

1. We are trying to figure out how Bangalore is to be spelt. For our politicians the spelling of Bangalore is more important than educating the poor, lighting the roads in rural areas.
2. We don’t know the official name of the airport yet. This is going to be more complex than solving a mathematics equation! Politicians would want it to be named after themselves or their mom or their village. Local crowd may want it named after a particular late film actor. Tippu Sultan‘s name was proposed because he was born in Devanahalli (the new airport is located at Devanahalli ) but was later shot down as it was shown his army had committed atrocities against few religions.
3. Now, unless the name is finalized where is the question of having “Official” memorabilia? The unofficial ‘leaded’ version can always be bought for a lower price from China.
4. I can take a bet our politicians wouldn’t have thought about making such items to begin with. They are busy with land grabbing, causing differences between religions and Zzzzzzz. Chuckle! Wait, is that funny? Nah!
5. Even if they decide we should have an Official memorabilia someone needs to decide what items have to be made. I will suggest a simple idea – form a ‘committee’ to decide what has to be made. Send them on a foreign jaunt. To avoid any controversies send MLAs from “all parties”. That way everybody gets to have fun.

Personally I think it should be named after Kempe Gowda but there are many opposing because he belongs to a particular community. Duh! How can we find a person who belongs to all communities? Wait, you can. Let us name it after a politician! In their election speech they always tell us “I care for all of you, I belong to all religions” (which translates to “I will treat you ‘equally’ – I will take money from all of you and harass all of you irrespective of your religion”)

For now the teenager from Poland has to wait..and wait. I will be more than happy to send him the “Official” memorabilia once it is actually released.

Update: (October 3, 2007)

It is heartening to see most of you want it to be named after Sir M. Visvesvaraya. One would think the choice is a no-brainer but then this will not happen as the no-brainer politician will not name our new airport after someone as deserving as Sir MV.

Sir MV belongs to the “entire” state, he has contributed to the entire state. The reason I suggested Kempe Gowda was because he is directly associated with Bangalore.

I am not for naming the airport after any film actor/actress. They are being paid well in their profession, so they are not doing us a favor. We are doing them a favor. And I am not aware of any actor in our state who is contributing “immensely” to the upliftment of the poor (in terms of education, free toilets). Actors are well aware that it is that section of the society which sweats it out to save money and watch their movies. It is high time we come to terms – yes, actors entertain us and we are compensating them. Let us stop it at that. They don’t need to be pampered. But let me also say there are many good actors/actresses in the industry who mind their own business and don’t expect any undue recognition from the society.