The station of T-Sakibanda lies between Guntakal and Ballari. It is in Anantapur district of Rayalseema region of Andhra Pradesh and close to the Karnataka border.
Note the peculiar spelling of T-Sakibanda. Not like the better known Tsunduru elsewhere in Andhra Pradesh. The hyphen after the T is clearly shown in this sign for all three languages.
Could it be a word like Tehsil or Taluk? Such words would normally be spelt out in a place name (e.g. Tahsil Bhadran, Kasur Tahsil). Anyway, in AP we have divisions and mandals.
From Google we get another T Sakibanda in faraway YSR (Kadapa) district. This has an alternative spelling of Chaki Banda (just like Chunduru for Tsunduru). Perhaps that is the explanation. But why the hyphen? Was someone fond of T-series cassettes or perhaps T-bone steaks?
Geography used to be a stable subject which did not need much updating. For many years the only genuine new country formed was Bangladesh, and the dubious Republic of Northern Cyprus a little later.
But quizzers in this line took a long time to recover from the twin shocks of the collapse of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia, which meant about 23 new countries which had to be memorized along with their capitals. The reunification of Germany and (earlier) Vietnam at least helped to REDUCE the number of countries to be studied.
Then people had flights of fancy, changing Swaziland to Eswatini (to encourage E-commerce?) Its neighbors had earlier made the switch from Bechuanaland and Basutoland to Botswana and Lesotho. Meanwhile a few other new countries such as Eritrea and South Sudan sneaked in when nobody was looking.
Then we have the renaming of cities in India. Many of them involved reverting from the British pronunciation to the original pronunciation (as in Calcutta-> Kolkata, Calicut -> Kozhikode and so on). This topic is enough for a few doctoral dissertations.
Now the rulers of India have bigger ideas, playing around with the names of larger entities. The creation of the Union Territories of Jammu & Kashmir AND Ladakh was hailed as a masterpiece. So next comes a mini-masterpiece, the Union Territory (yes, just one) of Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu:
(It will take a while to figure out where the “and” and “&” will be used). Also, the people in these places do not seem to have asked for this reunification of the smaller bits of Portuguese India.
Perhaps there is a point here. How many of you can find D & NH on a map? Even if you can, do you know WHY it is an Union Territory? (Another interesting point is why Chandernagore is a part of West Bengal and not an Union Territory like the rest of French India); see
As we have seen in the previous post, a name of a place or person may become offensive if it means something else in another language. We start with this station in the outskirts of Kolkata:
Though there are many words common to Hindi and Bengali, this is not one of them. In any case, the Bengali inscription indicates that it should be spelt Nungi or Noongi. This locality is known for the manufacture of fireworks, possibly the largest such centre in India after Sivakasi.
India has many place names such as Bangarapet, Bangiriposi, Banganapalle of mango fame and the former Bangalore. Then there is Bangkok, where you will find:
Poor Susan! She will have to be particularly careful there – especially as this is to become Bangkok’s main station in the near future.
There are other things traveling Indians will run into, such as this place in Sweden:
I have passed that way by train many years ago, although no suitable picture of the station sign is available on the net.
While this is not one of the largest cities of Sweden, the University of Lund is highly ranked.
Surnames such as Hammarlund are common in Sweden. The Hammarlund Radio Company was one of the leading manufacturers of radio receivers in the US. Back in Mumbai, there is this long-standing establishment near the Gateway of India:
We close with this sign which causes amusement in northern India:
Names like this are found in Gujarat. Morarjibhai’s middle name was Ranchhodji.
A standard sign in the US (especially in college classrooms) in “No food and drinks”. Someone at Stanford had put up a realistic sign stating “No freaks and dorks” which the faculty chose to leave untouched.
There was a controversial judge named Robert Bork who was nominated by President Reagan to the Supreme Court, but his nomination was rejected by the US Senate in 1987. While his name rhymes with “Dork”, the word predates him.
This town is somewhat larger than its Austrian counterpart. It is perhaps appropriate that it is famous for poultry:
More on the general topic of places with unusual names:
This list of synonyms became popular at the time of the Delhi elections in 2015, while discussing the results of the Congress party. The BJP fared better with 3 seats, which made it an “Auto rickshaw party” as its MLAs would fit in one. In various parts of the country there are other auto rickshaw parties where the entire membership fits in one.
Some are not originally in English but have come into common use. Like Nada in Spanish.
Appropriately, there is another zero-themed place name in Kerala:
And the railway across the Nullarbor Plain in Australia (the route of the famous Indian Pacific:
On the 4th day of the India vs England Test at Chennai, 19 Dec 2016.
Meanwhile, here is the Devil’s own locomotive (picture credit Sachin Balwatkar). It is now homed at Sabarmati shed, and was homed at Mhow some years ago. There were also some 666* s homed at Golden Rock.
More from the Devil’s domain here: Hell, Norway:
And the railway station there:
You may think that God has some influence here:
However, this is Norwegian for “Goods dispatch”
In closing, there has to be at least one joke involving devils. Here is one from 2016, which refers to the US presidential election:
A collection of picture of stations of the Indian Railways whose names involve fruit:
There is Mango, a suburb of Jamshedpur, which does not have a station. As Robert Vadra said, there is no space for the mango man in a banana republic.
Take a closer look at the sign for Sitafal Mandi in Hyderabad. It appears to be one of the old signs from the time of the Nizam’s State Railway, with the Hindi inscription added later.
One wonders how the citizens of Nagpur allowed a much smaller town to grab the title of Orange City.
And Amla may not be named after the fruit but is supposedly an acronym for “Ammunition Land”, where a large military storage facility exists.
Afterthought-Prior to partition, Afghanistan used to export fruits to different parts of India by train. These fruit trains usually started at Chaman (a railhead to the north of Quetta), travelled down the Bolan Pass and made their way to faraway places.
Elsewhere in England we can see stations for these Test venues:
In India, we have stations for Chepauk and Eden Gardens among others.
Also. if you travel from Mumbai to Surat, you will pass
and then
The second one needs no explanation, while the first relates to the lesser-known international players Atul Wassan and Atul Bedade and possibly a few more.
The route north of Nagpur is more promising, as it has
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followed by
Note that the name Amla is supposed to be derived from “Ammunition Lands” as it has one the largest ammunition depots in the country. This is probably one of the numerous urban legends of its kind.
Although Hashim Amla’s ancestors were from Gujarat this does not appear to be a common surname. Amla does mean a fruit (something like a gooseberry) in several Indian languages.
Have a look at these pictures and decide whether they are in India or somewhere else:
Note the Sindhi signboard in the right picture, which should help you to locate it. The first one is in Pakistan’s Punjab.
The “other” Hyderabad can be reached from India by the Thar Express, which you board at Zero Point after leaving India from Munabao.
Up to Partition, one had to refer to Hyderabad (Sind) and Hyderabad (Deccan) as both were important cities in undivided India.
Also this one:
While the river of this name flows through a part of India, this town is in Pakistan’s Punjab. One Indian Prime Minister (not Manmohan Singh) was born nearby.
First we take a look at different signs at SBC station, in its various avatars as Bangalore City, Bengaluru City and finally Krantivira Sangolli Rayanna (Bengaluru Station). Also don’t ask why the S got into SBC.
But the average Bangalorean might prefer to stick to calling it Majestic, like the way Hyderabadis stick to Nampalli, Amdavadis to Kalupur and Banarsis to Cantt (well, it was officially known as Benares Cantt until the 1940s).
At the other end of the line 138 km away we have Mysore (now Mysuru):
But the line between these cities has seen more than its share of renaming. Let us first look at an Indian Bradshaw entry from 1935:
The reproduction is not too good, and the mileage is not visible in this scan. Odd things you can see here are Maddur listed as a junction (though no branch line from there is listed in this Bradshaw or anywhere else). And several place names do not appear in present timetables.
Here is an extract from an official website showing the timings of a passenger train between Bengaluru and Mysuru:
Even this train does not stop at a few stations such as Krishnadevaraya Halt (5 km from SBC), Palahalli Halt (between S and NHY) and Mysuru New Goods Terminal (4 km before MYS) which is a pure goods station.
(Palahalli is apparently not on the present alignment but is still mentioned in railway documents).
Note the rare one-letter codes for Yeliyur (Y) and Shrirangapatna (S)
Apart from the changes to the names of SBC and MYS, we also note:
Closepet is now Ramanagaram (possibly it had been named after a British official)
French Rocks is now Pandavapura
Seringapatnam is now Srirangapattana (changing the simplified spelling of the British).
Other points of interest: the 1935 timetable shows 13 intermediate stations. The present slow passenger train stops at 19, while at least 3 more are known to exist.
Of course, there has been progress on this line. It was converted to broad gauge by the mid-90s and electrification continues at a snail’s pace-apparently it is complete up to Mandya. There is now a Shatabdi from Chennai along with numerous trains to different corners of the country. Even the former single track MG line is almost completely doubled apart from a short stretch outside Shrirangapattana where Tippu’s armoury building is being bodily shifted to make way for the new line, as you can see here:
Thanks to Raghavendra Rao and Sandeep Mohan for useful updates.
You would probably not think much of dings and dongs except in the context of bells (and American slang). However, the disambiguation feature of Wikipedia tells us about several other dings and dongs:
It is served by a number of trains (mainly slow passenger trains) between Hisar and Bathinda.
You may also have heard of Ding as a derogatory term for Anglo-Indians. The internet has an explanation for this, apparently from a blogger from Tamil Nadu:
Not sure if that was to be taken seriously. However there is a traditional Anglo-Indian dish called ding ding, which is called jerky in other countries:
Then there is the Vietnamese dong, which until recently was the least valuable world currency unit. More recently the thinly traded Iranian rial has taken this position.
At the moment the US dollar will get you over 22,400 VND (Vietnamese dong). while the Indian rupee will get you over 330. Even the Indonesian rupiah will get you 1.6 VND. The most valuable currency unit is the Kuwaiti dinar, which will get you 3.29 US dollars, 221 Indian rupees or…73,800 Vietnamese dong.
And Dong is the easternmost village in India. Its population fits into three huts. You still have to travel about 20 km further east to reach the tri-junction of India, China and Myanmar.
There is no railway line anywhere in that area, though there are stations such as Dongargaon and Dongargarh:
The latter station used to have a large steam shed earlier. It lies in Chhattisgarh on the main line from Mumbai to Kolkata.
Then there is the more common American usage for the dong, which needs no explanation.
The dong had its place in Bollywood. In the early 90s the film “Tahalka” featured Amrish Puri as Dong, dictator of Dongrila. One catchphrase of his has persisted down the years:
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