What was that again?

Setting the scene

Traffic snarl-ups irritate some people. They get all worked up as they wait for the signal to change, to get back moving. They are people in a hurry. Not so me. I always carry a book to read and if I don't, there are always billboards to read, shop signs to look at and adverts on the walls and just about everywhere.

If there are no pickings in the billboards, there is always the prospect of figuring if the number on the registration plate of the car ahead of my cab is a prime or not. There is nothing like doing numbers in your head to keep boredom or frustration away. Er. Did I just say that? Scratch that; doing numbers is one surefire way of getting frustrated, but trying to figure prime numbers is not. Okay, so glad we settled that.

Here is the poser

Yesterday, I was stuck waiting for the signals to change. Seen at the Gariahat roundabout:

The Vini Vidi Vici code

Takshyasila

Premiere Educational Institution

Really? You could have fooled me.

Advertising on billboards, a school that offers to educate students Class 9 onwards up to graduate degree levels gets it wrong in two languages.

Aargh! This is a school, educational institution, academy or whatever fancy name you want. And they get it so wrong in public?

I can grin and bear with the Latin mistake, just about. When it carries over to naming their endeavour Takshyasila, I despair. Do they actually expect parents to flock to their premises with a spelling like that? It is depressing to think of the children who make their way out into the wide world having been educated in places like this.

Since we are on the subject of billboards, here is another that makes me see red.

Hoffmen

A billboard plugging jeans and menswear. This makes me grind my teeth every time I see it. I wouldn't be caught dead in one of theirs. Hoffmen forsooth.

To get back to the school that needs schooling itself, I have been thinking about it; about how such a mistake could be made.

My most charitable theory is that perhaps they thought the world in general spells it wrong, or is lax in spelling and they were getting it right.

Taksha means to chisel or sculpt. Takshasila means sculpted stone.

Takshasila, which changed its spelling as and when men wrote about it, was an ancient seat of learning. Huen Tsang wrote about it. It was where Mahabharata was first recited as a tale of ancestors to Janamejaya who was performing a sarpa yajna or a snake sacrifice to retaliate at Takshaka, a sorta famous snake. I imagine Takshaka was great at etchings and must have had some hot dates. Let's not go into all that.

If we are to take a similar sounding word laksha and the derivative lakshya, it makes some weird sense:

Laksha is not just one hundred thousand; it also means that which is observed, taken note of, attended to. Lakshya, on the other hand, is that which is to be achieved, a target, an end, a project to be undertaken. These are just some definitions among others, by the way. I won't bore you with all of them.

If one muses about it, one could say if takshana is to sculpt or chisel (or whittle) something, takshya will mean that which is to be sculpted or chiseled (or whittled). But, I am afraid there is no such word as takshya. Not in my dictionaries (which are fairly comprehensive), anyhow.

Perhaps that school has studied this and decided that since it is going to chisel money out of parents and carve a huge slab of profit, it would be apt to coin a word and call itself Takshyasila, where the parents will be chiselled out of their hard-earned funds?

After all, to chisel means to cheat or rip off, too.

Anything is possible.

Cheers!