India-no-place

They were twenty-year-old twins who had just moved out from Indianapolis, or “India-no-place,” as they said. They wanted to be stars.

Hardly anybody writes odes to Indianapolis. No Sandburg or Gershwin has ever praised the Midwestern city’s hard American beauty. No bustling metropolis, that town; no seething cauldron of culture. Instead, folks mockingly called it “India-no-place.”

These monikers are frequently descriptive (“The Capital City”), associated with a prominent industry (“The Railroad City”), geographical (“Crossroads of America”), sports-related (home of “The Greatest Spectacle in Racing”), religiously inspired (“City of Churches”), derogatory (“Naptown,” “India-no-place,” “End-of-No-Place”), or abbreviations (“Indy”).

It has a sort of big city, whose nickname is India-no-place, but the rest of the state is composed of small towns with little opportunity.