Yours, Sinega.

I once received an SMS on my mobile- something about taking revenge on the British, who oppressed Indians and ruled over us, by butchering the English language as much as possible. It looks like people really are doing their best… check this pamphlet out. A little girl gave it to me in a bus. I was supposed to return it after reading, but I liked it so much, I kept it.

I also had a lot of fun reading the hoardings and boards in Vellore. Here are a few signs I noticed near the Vellore fort:

“Do not commit nuisance”
“Do not do impure here”

Then there were the usual ‘puncture shops’. ‘Puncture’ is probably the most widely misspelled word ever: Puncher, Pancher, Punchar, Punchur, Pantcher, Pancter, and on one memorable occasion, I saw Buncher

That was probably because of the Tamil indifference towards differences in voicing. That would also explain this board I saw hanging outside an ice cream parlour:

“Sold availeble here:
Chacopar
Garnetto
Bista-Badam
Gulfi”

As it turned out, people also had a lot of trouble getting my name right. I thought it was a simple enough name. Neha. Two syllables, and neither /n/ nor /h/ is especially difficult to pronounce. But the Vellorians had to struggle to get it right. Occasionally, they somehow managed to mutate my name into ‘Megha’ or ‘Rekha’ or something like that. ‘Nega’ was bearable. But more often than not, people called me ‘Sinega’ (that’s how they’d be writing ‘Sneha’ in Tamil). And so, to make life easier for the people of Adukkamparai, I let them call me Sinega. And whenever someone asked me what my name was, I’d just take a deep breath and say, “Sinega”.


Now you know at least one reason why I’m glad I’m back home… It’s good to be Neha again!