The blog formerly known as Sepia Mutiny

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As you may have heard, last month Bangalore decided to change its name to Bengaluru, a contraction of a Kannada phrase, ‘benda kaal ooru,’ which means ‘city of boiled beans.’

We here at the Mutiny fully support casting off the linguistic corruption of the oppressor. We raise our henna’d fists in solidarity and announce the following:

Sepia Mutiny shall henceforth be known as Faärtinfernø, which means ‘blog of hopeless flames.’

Anyone visiting us in North Dakota must use the new name, or their luggage will wind up lost.

Anyone using the old name will be refused entry into places of worship for being insufficiently brown.

We are spending 900 kajillion dollars to update our signs and stationery. That leaves us nothing to fix our traffic jams, deteriorating infrastructure and inadequate power and bandwidth for our technology operations, but our readers will be happy knowing that we’re spending our time on what really matters.

All blog business will be conducted in our native language: uninformed bloviation, semantic squabbles, unfunny jokes, incomprehensible literary references, tales of virility, meandering personal stories and poli-sci-theory put-downs which nobody gets.

We apologize for this radical change.

To more fully throw off the yoke of the oppressor, every post will be written in our ancient script of Chefspeak.

Yørn desh born, desh born Yørn, børk! børk! børk!

Related post: The tyranny of a transposition typo

17 thoughts on “The blog formerly known as Sepia Mutiny”

  3. Good call – particularly after any ambiguousness following the SM of Britain fiasco 😉

  4. All blog business will be conducted in our native language:

    नेकी और पूछ पूछ । ऐसै कामोँ के लिये तो मै हमेशा तैय्यार हूँ |

  5. नेकी और पूछ पूछ । ऐसै कामोँ के लिये तो मै हमेशा तैय्यार हूँ |

    Crap. Now I can’t even read my own blog. 😉

  6. तैय्यार

    GGK: Do you think your spelling for “ready” is correct. I also use the phonetic translator as recommended by you but a single sentence takes me 15 minutes and even then spellings do not come out right. I have seen some devanagri blogs through desipundit, they write pretty well.

    Abhi: Rough translation, “Do you need to ask permission for good deeds. I am always ready for such things”

  7. GGK: Do you think your spelling for “ready” is correct. I also use the phonetic translator as recommended by you but a single sentence takes me 15 minutes and even then spellings do not come out right. I have seen some devanagri blogs through desipundit, they write pretty well.

    I use hindi writer but am not using it at present but a yet to be released application….Cant say anything else, NDA etc. I think hindiwriters implimentaion of itrans is the best so far. but like you have said there is a drag on typing speed….I think itrans itself needs modification. Also Devendra parakh(hindiwriter) has also added spellcheck for MS word with hindi writer. http://devendraparakh.port5.com/ I will check that out next week. It may improve speed.

  8. to Faärtinfernø:

    quite disspointed in the name change, as i’ve already acquired all items supporting sm, from the towels with embroidered SM to the damn car window flags that say SM… crap…and temporary tatoos as well.. hmm… maybe I can somehow change the SM to look like FA.. um.. with flames of course.. gosh.. the new emblem will be fabulous…since i don’t want my luggage lost in the midst of the north dakota winters… that would be horrendous..

    so instead of mutiny on.. i guess it’ll be Faärt on 😉

    cheers!

  9. lol SM’s new name reminds me of Eurotrip, where that guy had to say a certain word to get out of the vandersexxx bondage.

    As for Bangalore,

    OMGWTF?! Why is India so adamant about denying the legacy Britain left? Sure, it wasn’t just and we were a conquered nation, but why try to deny the fact that it ever happened? Gahh… I was born in Bangalore and will continue to call it Bangalore, along with the other cool cities in India: Madras, Bombay and Calcutta. I need some ice cream.

  10. A more orig- we were a conquered nation, and I think it signifies that we are no longer a conquered nation. I think it is an important statement to make, but I’m sure the $ could be better spent elsewhere.

  11. HAHAHAHA! Awesome post. Plus the new spam word “brown” aaaaaahahhahaha!! Manish, you dog.

    Currently bumpin: Bluffmaster – Right here, right now (hip hop remix). pakistan is poppin bottles to this track. we’re talkin Teem, Pakcola, and Sprite Zero, bhai saab.

  12. TripleA: You’re right, the money can be put to better use. As for the statement, there are few nations(if any) on earth that don’t know about India’s independence. I mean, “gandhi” is a pretty universally renowned name. So it just seems like either a lingering inferiority complex or an overdose of nationalism for India to go so far as to change the names of its cities to show it isn’t a conquered nation anymore.

  13. a more orig- I didn’t mean that so literally. I think it is somewhat embarrassing for India to continue to have “anglified” names for its major cities. The names were modified to make them easier for the Western tongue. I think it’s great they are de-anglifying them. Of course everyone knows of India’s independence, but I think these name changes are just part of the casting off of the remnants of British rule, both literally and symbolically.

  15. Manish – look, man, “Bengaluru” is just how a Kannadiga would pronounce “Bangalore.” The historical origin of the name is contested, but nobody honestly believes it was derived from ‘benda kaal ooru;Â’ thats just from an enjoyable little myth about a Hoysala king being lost and starving in a forest, and being rescued and fed beans by a hermit. Thats nonsensical, and its mostly insisted on by us urban sophisticates as a way to ridicule the name-change.

    You could have at least googled it: the theories are numerous and speculation is rife. In the end, it doesnt make a difference; there are arguments on both sides, and they’re both political – I’m going to paste in some thoughts I’d put down earlier in my blog:

    The proposal is annoying for many reasons, which I’m sure will be enumerated for me several times during my week home. It is also interesting in terms of the study of names, and why we are attached to them and what we accomplish through manipulating them. If the Karnataka Rakshana Vedike thinks that the name-change will cause Bangalore to belong more significantly to the rest of the state, or make the gleaming halls of Infosys echo with channagideeras, I think they are mistaken. But if the capital city really will be more approachable to everyone else in the state, then maybe there is a good in it that I, personally, do not perceive or value. Those of us who are objecting probably also need to examine why we’re so distressed about the change. After all, law does not change names, it just changes spelling. Theres a sentiment that stirs beneath our rational, political arguments about the adequacy of the status quo and the dangers of linguistic nationalism and tubthumping – its our anxiety at the fact that our precarious culture, not fully Western but certainly not fully Kannadiga, just got pushed onto its back foot. Taking the names entirely on their own accoustic merits, Bengaluru is so soft and mellifluous, but Bangalore shakes off those drooping vowels and is crisper, more anglicized – it sounds like the city we want it to become for our comfort – and thats our linguistic chauvinism. Thats exactly the reason why a lot of us would rather call Bangalore our home, and call our home Bangalore. So I am angry but I will try not to mouth off about it too often. I am, in the meanwhile, looking forward to the renaming of New Delhi as Indraprastha.

  16. The part that really bothers me is that in this age of ‘Brand Names’, we are throwing away the one brand name that people seem to know. Ask any person in the IT industry about bangalore and they know about it. The other is ofcourse, it is such a waste of money to change the name of a city (Most people don’t realize how much it can end up costing).

  17. i think americans should rename america to red indiana.coz america is the land of red indians