What’s wrong with your name?


To agree with Amitabh Bachchan English is very Phunny (or funny) language. A language which has greatest number of literature works happening (or happened) has serious scarcity of generalized language rules, e.g. how to spell a sound or how to pronounce a word. There can half a dozen different ways to pronounce one sound. Similarly it has half a dozen different spellings for a word which is pronounced uniquely.

Trouble comes when one needs to write on Indian word in English (karma, nirvana, guru, pundit etc) and otherwise also. I have encountered three names written in three different spellings but pronounced the same. Sandhya , Sandya , Santhya, Santhiya.. Which one is correct? Technically going, none of them. No combination of English alphabet can accommodate these kinds of thousand words (except otherwise UNICODE). Its English, you can spell your name the way you want, where is the problem? Problem is the attitude of “you way of spelling is not correct”.

In one way these differences are very useful, to guess where that is person is from. If a girl writes her name as Sandhya, she is south Indian. If Sandya , she is north Indian. Any “th” ( like “Santhya” or “Santhiya” ) is either from Tamilnadu or Kerala and north-east people don’t name their name daughter as “sandya”. Cool isn’t it ?

Anyways come to the point. To go technically, South Indians pick letters as exactly it sounds in alphabetical chart, north Indians pick it from English words where they are used. For example letter “t” sounds retroflex in alphabetical chart , in English words it can be dental , or retroflex.

Continue reading “What’s wrong with your name?”

A patriots calculation


Disclaimer: This post is tagged in “humor “category.

Business today (Feb 11) had one article about “why you to stop pulling your wallet for everything”. That includes movies, food, cigarettes etc. To make the article more attractive some statistics were there too. They were highly optimistic calculations, for example if you don’t eat pizza for a year how much you’ll end up saving after 30 years. Article was completely high hopes for me and my friends. Majorly because of the reason we are surviving this phase life solely on “strict” junk food.

Let’s not analyze all of them. Take their case study on cigarette.

If you are smoking a packet of cigarette, say classic milds

Cost per day ————————————— 80

Cost per year – ———————————29200

If you invest the same

liqid fund (say interest rate of 5% pa) —- 19, 40,014

Provident fund (interest rate of 8% pa) — 33, 07,870

BSE sensex (assume 18% pa) – ——– 2, 30, 95,681

Stock portfolio (with 20% pa) — ——-3, 45, 10,941

Let’s go a patriot ways.

In that the vendor of cigarette gets a commission of 10 % of total cost. You would not buy it with the same vendor for thirty years. Still for calculation lets assume you do. Also you are the only one who pull wallet for everything, not him. He is a human as you, and wish to gain lot of money through BSE sensex. He invests his (say) 30% of this particular income, and gains 1,385,741. (Same calculation as above, I dint invent math…!). Rest 70 % of his income goes for his wife’s kitty parties, school donation for his son, make up kit for his daughter etc. That would add up to 3,333,395. See, you are the reason for making four dreams coming true at least partially.

Next comes the ITC. Indian Tobacco Company is said to be one of the greatest enterprise ever established in India. One of my friends says, they used to halt their road trip and salute whenever an ITC comes on the road. 70 % of your investment (that would be purchase of cigarette here) will go to ITC. It employs thousands of workers for production, spends millions of rupees on tobacco, paper, advertisement etc. So imagine hoe may jobs will be created, just by you. So they get 20440 of your 30 years purchase. They too have intelligent directors and them to will invest, say 30 % of what you gave them. BSE sensex shall give them 48, 50,093 by end of 30 years. Continue reading “A patriots calculation”