W

As part of a recent drive to reenforce laws in Mumbai, all hoardings announcing the names of business establishments in the city should be bilingual, with the Marathi name displayed prominently. Since Devanagari [the script used to write Marathi, Hindi etc.] is a phonetic one [unlike the Chinese jigsaw puzzle] it isn't very hard to write close approximations of the English names, now prevalent, in Marathi. They've successfully managed to rewrite names such as Haute Couture, Smokin' Lee's, Nature's Basket, Not Just Jazz By the Bay etc. But mistakes do creep in and I saw that the Marathi name, for a ladies ethnic work wear store called "W", was "dubloo".

But I guess this one can be comfusing so I shall not laugh at them. When I learned the alphabet, this little symbol was called "Dubbli-yoo". I can still recall, thanks to my amazing memory, the nursery rhyme, "you, we, dubbli-yoo, ex, why, ezed". I had always wondered what "dubbli-yoo" meant until later on I realised it could be "Double-U". But why doulbe-U? Why not double-V?? It definitely looks closer to a double-V and a double-U! Besides, most of the time it's read as double-V anyway : vvhat, vvhy, vvhen rather than uuhat, uuhy, uuhen.

UU-hat?? No vvay!!