My Snell is Cooler than Yours

Written by new field correspondent Bawarchi!

I met Pratap and the Kumars around 4 years ago and my copy of Snell has seen a lot of action. So much that, like an extra-loved teddy bear, it started showing some serious signs of wear after a couple years. Whole chapters were coming loose and I started to become reluctant to use it anymore since it was hard to open without pages escaping everywhere. Well...isme kya faida hoga? So I finally I dropped it off at a copying-binding-cell phone accessory-bus ticket-pav bhaji shop in Pune the other day and came back in a couple days to find:

It's a hard cover now! Well it takes up just a bit more precious space in my backpack but, man, it's pretty bomb proof. I can hardly even open it all the way, they stitched the binding through all the pages so tightly. But it works and it's been thoroughly Indiafied which makes me so proud of my little Snell. But the best part is:

I had forgotten I had left my special bookmark inside. It's my ticket stub from A.R. Rahman and Company's show in Oakland back in June. (It was a kick ass show by the way. Sukhwinder did an extended Chhaiyya Chaiyya that had everyone on their feet...well at least everyone in our section.) It got sewed into the binding and is now conjoined with the second chapter. I just think it's all too cool. Am I strange and geeky about this? Very well, I am strange and geeky about this and I am confessing right here that I joined this blog's team just so I could tell the world how cool my Snell is.

But just to be responsible, here's an awesome sign for you all to practice your devanagari reading skills. Hint: You don't need to know a word of Hindi to know what products and services are being offered.

Till next time...I'll see if I can snap any more good practice signs here in Bombay.

Eddie

Read That Sign! round 3

The more Hindi I learn, the more I see in my photos from India (summer 2006). Here's a detail from a picture of a street in Agra. I'm proud to say I got this one right away. If you click on the photo, you'll be taken to the original, full photo, where I put the transliteration and some notes. You'll also see what was really the subject of the photo....

Read That Sign! round 2

After reading Ultrabrown's post on the Wagah Border and its delightful/baffling display of patriotism, I flipped through some pictures from my trip there in July 2006. Here's a sign that faces you as you enter the Indian side of the arena (that might not be quite the right term, but it's stepped seats full of cheering crowds, so it seems to fit).

I feel like I should be able to identify these words, but I can't quite do it. My guess is:
svarn jayantee dvaar
With the help of Word AnyWhere, maybe this is
gold ____ gate. Now if only I could figure out the _____.

sign, sign everywhere a sign

I've started going through some of my photos from my trip to India last summer, trying to work through the Devanagari, and Trivial Matters helped me with this one. That was a real labor of love on his part, too; it took me at least half an hour, with TM saying "Now what do you think could come after LA?". It's amazing to me how thrown I am by fonts that are different from those in my book. If you want to reenact the painful process, click on the photo to go to the flickr page, where I put the answers and some notes on the bits I found hardest.