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January 29, 2006
Funny signs from India
Indians can sometimes be really funny when they least intend to be. One of the themes of this blog is to attempt to explain some things Indians say and do (my Indian English Dictionary hopefully helps a little) so that outsiders find them less funny and take them more seriously. Regardless, there are some things that make me laugh-out loud and are yet inimitably Indian. As examples, I present a few signs I saw on a recent trip to India. I didn't have my digital camera with me at all times to take real pictures of the signs, but I've tried to reproduce them as best as I could from visual memory.
This Chennai road safety sign demonstrates the amazing Indian propensity to sound cool through rhyme, even at the expense of grammar. My mom once won a slogan competition for a detergent named Surf. Her entry was "There is no dispute/Surf has no substitute". At least it was grammatical! Sadly, unlike her entry, it is exceedingly common to find examples of grammar being easily nixed just for the sake of a rhyme. Even when I was dabbling with writing English poetry (didn't we all in our hormonal teen years?), I always stuck to rigid rhyme schemes and couplet forms. Only later, with the mind-expanding influences of poets like e e cummings did I learn to appreciate non-rhyming poetry.
I was stuck in traffic in an autorickshaw in Chennai and I was feeling very irritated. Yet, when I saw the above sign at the intersection, I almost fell over laughing. Seeing God mentioned anywhere on road safety signs is unthinkable in the United States -- Michael Newdow and other Establishment Clause-mongering lawyers would have too much of a field day. Although the sign got my attention and appealed to my sense of humor, I doubt many Americans would find it funny. Can't deny its originality though.
I saw this sign for a mini-mall/shopping complex in my mother's hometown. The spelling of Plazaa shown is probably intentional -- a sort of cool eye-dialect. However, the swastika is almost definitely uninentional. The swastika has been associated with well-being, health and prosperity in India long before the Nazis perverted it for their purposes. Yet, its momentous appearance along with 'German' is hard not to pass by without doing a double-take.
This was a funny, witty and yet strangely humbling chalk scrawl I saw on a temple whiteboard in my mother's hometown. I have yet to see a more succinct expression of the difference between humanity and divinity, viz. transcending characteristically human pettiness.
Posted by Vishy at January 29, 2006 04:41 PM