Indian City Stereotypes
How the world stereotypes your city?
Upon reading this post by Nate Shivar on American city stereotypes, I started wondering how people stereotype major Indian cities. Google autocompletes serve as a good proxy for the stereotypes that people associate with these cities.
So here are some of my discoveries on what people think of your city:
Chennai
Having lived in Chennai for two decades, I agree that the stereotypes hot and humid are pretty justified. But I was pretty surprised to learn that Chennai is hated. Lonelyplanet in 2010 even lists Chennai as one of the cities that is most hated.
Madras was renamed to Chennai, its Tamil endonym, circa 1996. Many people who lived in the city when it was Madras still prefer to call it Madras. As to the etymology of Madras, there are a couple of versions.
Adenovirus which causes conjunctivitis was discovered in Chennai leading to the disease’s popular name Madras Eye.
Mumbai
India is one of the handful of countries that uses half/quarter hour deviations from GMT. But the fact that Mumbai’s time zone being a half hour off is so frequently googled speaks to the vast worldwide interest in traveling to the city.
Mumbai is the most populous and one of the most expensive metropolitan areas in India.
Delhi
I was very surprised to find that Delhi was most looked up in the context of the animation movie Delhi Safari, which I didn’t know existed.
Unfortunately, due to some horrific recent events Delhi is stereotyped as being unsafe for women.
Kolkata
Kolkata, formerly known as Calcutta, came to be known as the City of Joy after Dominique Lapierre’s 1985 book in that name. Also, people who look up Kolkata need to get better at grammar, because ‘why is kolkata famous for’ does not make sense.
Bangalore
Bangalore was once the garden city owing to its pleasant weather, greenness and the big parks within the city. Now it is notorious for its traffic jams caused predominantly because it has transformed into the Silicon Valley of India.
BTW, I wonder if people mean the weather or the city when they ask ‘why is Bangalore so cool’? I guess responses might differ based on whether you ask a Bangalorean or not.
Ahmedabad
Ahmedabad was once the financial capital of the state encompassed in a fort. Gujarat’s government has also helped the city make tremendous progress by attracting huge investments.
Grammatically speaking, people looking up Ahmedabad are similar to people looking up for Kolkata.
Pune
Prominently located in the Deccan plateau, Pune has historically been an attractive student destination (hence called the Oxford of the east). It is also the second biggest city in Maharashtra next to Mumbai.
