It sounds suspiciously like Rabindranath Tagores poem Juta Abishkaar (The Invention of the Shoe). Ministers and noblemen running helter-skelter to contrive a means of protecting the kings feet from dust and soil,coming up with absurdities like carpeting the earth. That flutter and flurry can be observed among Mamata Banerjees ministers and opposition MLAs putting their heads together,running to linguists and littérateurs,losing sleep over what name becomes West Bengal best. The West in Bengal condemned the state to the bottom of alphabetically arranged tables,eliciting yawns from other states whenever Bengal took the pulpit. A way out of this tail-ending misery must be found,decreed the chief minister,and a way is being found. Except,this road has been travelled by the Marxists,when they changed the name of Calcutta but couldnt go the whole hog of retiring the geographical marker that had apparently sunk Bengals name and fame. After all,if East Bengal no longer exists,why should West Bengal? One reason the West is still extant is history. Bengal was once one,and bigger. Now its divided by an international border. The other is culture: that border is also a rough cultural divide. But then,jettisoning the burden of history is not necessarily the denial of history. Of the names on the table,Paschimbanga is a literal translation of the current name; Bangabhumi has a poetic fervour denied to the prosaic Bangapradesh; Gaur Banga harks back to ancient Bengal; Banga and Bangla are minimalist. However,Paundrabardhan is a temporal and spatial misfit one Paundra king apparently fought at Kurukshetra; their capital,Paundranagar,is Bangladeshs oldest urban ruins at Mahasthangarh. Besides,Paundra comprised mostly Pabna,Bogra and Rajshahi all big names on the map of the other Bengal.
