Letters from Uttar Pradesh
This February, 2022, I visited the city of Allahabad (now Prayagraj). It was a sombre gathering, so there was not much exploring of the city to be done. I also barely knew anybody there. For a younger me, this would have been a perfect recipe for boredom. Now, however, I have a magnificent ace up my sleeve for any new and unfamiliar city I visit: my passion for documenting and observing street lettering. Here’s what I found.
सर्वेक्षण – Sarvekshan
The Hindi word ‘sarvekshan’, meaning ‘survey’, was painted all across town. From my residing family in the city, I understood that this word signified an environmental and cleanliness survey conducted by the government. It was mostly painted in large, heavy letters that aimed to be readable as well as eye-catching.
ै – The ‘ai’ mātrā’s stylistic alternate
The ‘ai’ matra in Devanagari is a mark that is positioned on top of characters in such a manner: पै. As seen here, both the segments of the matra stem from a single point above the character. This is the way I have learnt to write this matra even as a child. However, while observing Allahabad’s street lettering, I found an alternate method of writing this form.
In the examples below, the two segments emerge from separate points above the character. This alternate works well where the matra sits atop wider forms, especially those that join the top line (shirorekha) at two junctions. It may, however, look odd with narrower characters or those that have only one point of intersection with the shiro, such as र or द.
छ — Cha’s stylistic alternate
I had no idea, before entering the type design industry, that people argued or debated about the ‘correct’ form of a letter. One such letter in Devanagari is छ (cha), which Google’s Noto Sans has best felt neutrally represented as the form seen here: छ. After conversing with native readers around me, I noted a few commonly learned styles of this letter, as drawn below.
While I learnt the second form at school, some family members swear by the third and fifth form. Meanwhile, my colleagues at Ek Type have grown up with the first form. Obviously, none of these are inherently correct. It’s simply what we’ve learnt to be true. In Allahabad, most street lettering displayed the fourth variant of the letterform, shown in the above image. Some examples of this letterform in signages:
Parting thoughts
Having walked around in search of type in Bangalore the most, where the script is Kannada, I have gained some understanding of common versus unique styles in the script. I can also identify, to some extent, what I think of as good lettering. On my first few type walks, I clicked an excessive number of photos; any hand-painted Kannada signage that I spotted ended up in my camera reel. In my later walks, I began exercising my discretion and did not stop for very common styles or “poorly-painted” signs.
In Allahabad, the script I was photographing was not Kannada, as in Bangalore. It was Devanagari, to which I had not sensitised myself to the same extent. I clicked photos with a reckless abandon, just as I had done for Kannada signages before.
