I find it very difficult to deal with initials. Those letters that, to everyone else, seem to denote something meaningful, but to me, remain just that….having just seen pictures on INW (India Nature Watch) of the CSE (Crested Serpent Eagle) and posted from LRK (goodness knows what or where that is)… (update, that’s the Little Rann of Kutch, in Gujarat, apparently!) I feel that initials are just things invented so that the user can appear more knowledgeable and jargon-enabled than the non-initials person. Even when I can work out part of it, I can’t work out the whole. I used to keep reading aout SGNP and realized that the NP was probably National Park, but it took me a long while to work out that SG was Sanjay Gandhi. (FG and IG had RG and SG, you know, and RG married SG and they had PG and RG,who are trying their hand at extending the dynasty . SG married MG but IG threw her out after SG died, and VG is not in the polictical picture yet.)

And even when I know what the initials stand for, sometimes the initials and acronyms suggest hilarious things to my mind. AIADMK (All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, if you can pronounce that) makes me say, “Ayya, DMK!”… a kind of excited exclamation. COMED-K (the joint entrance exam for Medical,Engineering, and Dental students, Karnataka) makes me add a “Y” at the end of the COMED and laugh at the way the unfeeling authorities have been playing with the lives of hapless young students for the past few years. (COMEDY-K would also describe the political scenario of Karnataka very well.)

IWPTRTFNOTAB. (I Want People To Refer To the Full Names of Things, Animals, and Birds.) So please, I don’t want to hear about LBV’s and RRP’s (Long-Billed Vultures and Rose-Ringed Parakeets) or I will GUIS (Go Up In Smoke.)

However, I do LOVE witty cross-lingual acronyms like:

KEB (Kai Enthi Bhavan, describing the little Darshini eateries that dot Bangalore…“kai enthi” means “holding in one’s hand” and refers to the way patrons stand up in these joints, either at tall tables, or holding their food plates in their hands.) KEB is usually Karnataka Electricity Board.

VIP (VAy IllA Poocchi…“insect without a voice”..to describe an overly meek and mild person) VIP is usually Very Important Person.

HMT (Half Mottai Thalai…“half head bald”..obviously to describe one with a slipping hairline) HMT is usually Hindustan Machine Tools.

I would love to hear some other cross-lingual ones like that….