So a small name change started it all. Deli9Bistro which had opened up in Gachibowli just a few weeks ago was forced to change its name. It is henceforth going to be called Deli9bistro.

Why was this name change implemented, I wondered. It couldn’t be Numerology. I mean, everyone knows that the owners are bad at Maths. It couldn’t be Astrology. The owners are too close to the stars to care a damn. So what could it be that made them take such a momentous decision.

I was intrigued. And I couldn’t sleep this afternoon. And that mad state of sleeplessness continued till my little bird told me the secret.

It had to do with the staff you see. Due to a shortage of local, trained talent, most restaurants had taken to hire people from Orissa, Bihar and even Bengal. The problem with these ‘vernacs’ was that they were used to the ka, kha, gag, ghaa, na kind of alphabets and syllables.

English unfortunately did not differentiate between one alphabet and its thicker cousin. A did not have an Aa. B did not have a Bb. And so on.

So someone, someone quite smart actually, decided that they would distinguish sounds by whether they were Capital Letters or Small.

And that is where the problem arose. In its earlier avatar, the staff used to call the outlet Deli-Nine-Bheestro because they thought the Capital B had to be hard pronounced with a ‘h’ sound. Bheestro! Get it. Not the softer bistro.

Now that was sounding real ‘dehati’. And that is not what the suave trio at the Nine Group of Companies likes. They had to ensure that the staff got the pronunciation right. So they quietly changed the capital B to a small b.

Call them now, and see how they’ve gotten their staff to stop calling it Bheestro . They have indeed started calling it Bistro.

Truly a triumph of alphabetology over Mother Tongue Influence.

Well done guys. Now the next challenge is to get your staff to stop calling it Delhi9Bistro