A Listing Fancy...and the best of Indian English

I'm a list maker by nature. Groans? Chuckles? Knowing sighs? Yes, I'll make a list of just about anything. In the most neurotic stretches of my college career, I would give in to insomnia and sit up at the computer, making a Master List. A list of lists. That way I would always have another list to work on. I must have felt that this meta-list, if it could only be made thorough enough, would define me as a person. Take one particular sub-list, that of favorite music: surely a few data points (say, The Fall, Chopin nocturnes, and Doc Watson) taken together would define a unique individual, just as three points uniquely determine a mathematical plane? Something like that. This was list-making as an exercise in self-definition, at a time when a sturdy identity is worth its weight in Monte Cristo sandwiches. But greasy culinary adventures are another topic, and another list, entirely.


I've been indulging in the old vice again, now largely as a way to get a handle on the ungainly, wildly varied mass of memories that have piled up over the course of my travels this season. List making as mnemonic device, an age-old strategy, I suppose. And there's the thought that each list harbors the seed for one or more pieces of writing. Little seeds I hoard jealously, as, now that I've embarked on the solo phase of this trip, writing is my lifeline. Lord help me if I can't come up with something to write. So, lists.

Here then, are parts of my master list for this time and place, with each item to be made flesh by the great Word as my fancy and/or readers demand:


Best Samples of Indian English
Best Hole-in-the-Wall Eateries
Worst Hotel Experiences
Most Memorable People Encountered
Causes of Continued Culture Shock


In fact the first of these lists is easily completed--or at least begun. Without further ado, then, here are my favorite examples from signs, menus, etc. across the Subcontinent, of the way English is used and abused around here.

"Yes...we are less dirty" - restaurant

"We all made out of one radiation" - ashram banner

"Sweets problem? Solves with us" - sweets shop

Oil Pouch, Water Pouch, Es Cambal - egg preparations on a menu

Butter Scrotch - ice cream flavor

Cheaf & Best - hotel advertisement

Beans Coffee - menu item

Testy Snakes - menu heading

Fooding and Lodging - ubiquitous hotel offer

Shirting and Suiting - tailor's sign


...and many more, if only I could remember them all. Or figure out which mildewed, scrunched up notebook I'd jotted them all down in.