Town of duplicates seeks its original name

THRISSUR: Kunnamkulam, the town of ‘duplicates’, is on a unique cyber campaign to get its often misspelt ‘name’ corrected.Kunnamkulam is written as ‘Kundamkulam’ in Malayalam in sign boards and publications. To protest against the irreverence meted out to the little town, the youth here have used Facebook, the immensely-popular social networking media, to get its name correctly written. A community, named ‘Mission Kunnamkulam’, has been urging the people to write and pronounce ‘Kunnamkulam’ instead of ‘Kundamkulam’.The issue has hotted up with more than 240 members joining the community within a few days.In a poll conducted to get the response of users, the name Kunnamkulam found more supporters with over 50 people choosing it over Kundamkulam (only two were content with the manner it is being written now in Malayalam). However, most of them are happy about the way ‘Kunnamkulam’ is being correctly written in English.The members of the community has been arguing that the name Kunnamkulam was formed from ‘Kunnu’ (mountain) and Kulam (pond), and that the name ‘Kundamkulam’ was meaningless.In history books, the place was called ‘Kunnamkulangara’ before Tippu Sultan attacked the southern part of the country, says the community.“I hope that the discussion in Facebook forces the municipality authorities to think over it,” Lijo Cheeran Jose, an IT engineer at Kunnamkulam who is a prompt presence at the discussions, says.