The Classic Way of Naming Towns

Carbon testing detected one of Cornell’s overlooked acquisitions, an ancient Pali manuscript on a palmyra leaf, to be older than 1200 years. So after I struggled a whole day to decode it, my new friend, Harry, took me to a dingy bar with upbeat music to tell me about Ithaca. I spent 5 Dollars on a Long Island and a more worthy half of that to play Karma Chameleon on the jukebox. Harry said Ithaca’s more colourful and quaint than Karma Chameleon.

I asked how. He finished his beer and told me a long story about George Washington assigning lands after a war to some classically educated generals, and they named the provinces to reflect their classical education. Every day is like sur..vival. So the Algonquin word Taughannock became Ithaca. I checked my urge to go back to the jukebox and play Sia’s Chandelier. At the end, he asked what song I needed next.

I See a Bad Moon Rising! Playing it he was adamant the manuscript was hastily written with a conquest imminent: “Always.. something wicked that way comes from Indi…yarrr?” “True, the writing’s particularly blotted, but it was finished with a reference to seek shelter in temples—not frickin’ caves like in wartimes.” “Maybe they tried to erase it?” I looked at the ceiling above in vain to see some moonlight.

...I hear the voice of rage and ruin, said the last drop of my Long Island. Inside me, it wanted to talk beyond the classics.

I said how my town came into being. It had been an unfit land for export cultivation or to be a Cricket field. In colonial Ceylon during the Second World War, there was an influenza epidemic. And the Japs used to bomb Colombo. They cleaned up the whole Angoda hospital within minutes. Looks like we're in for nasty weather / One eye is taken for an eye.

Not our war, I said. He was Facebooking on the phone and asked my username. But the influenza epidemic had worsened, and the Brits had to open a new hospital in the middle of nowhere. They named it Infectious Diseases Hospital.

“Do you want to go dancing somewhere with college chicks?” No, Oh don't go 'round tonight / It's bound to take your life. The numbers dying from starvation flew higher than influenza victims. So a few people started shops around the Infectious Diseases Hospital. The hospital grew. More people came. They wanted to call it IDH for short, but pronounced EEdiyech.

Adele started saying Hello without realising by then we had spent more than 10 hours together.

Ithaca and IDH, I sighed. Adele tried to match it in a wail. “Let’s go to Moonies,” he said getting up.