Our apartment building in Calcutta has a chilchhad, a word which for I don't think there is an English equivalent. It refers to a supra-roof – a raised section higher than the main roof, e.g. the top of a rooftop room.
There are no stairs to our chilchhad; it is accessible only by clambering up a wall. As far as I am aware, no one else goes up to the chilchhad, and once on it, you are higher than the neighbouring windows and rooftops. It has always been my favourite feature of the building.
Among other things, it is good for taking photos of the sunrise.
In a complete volte-face from my earlier stance, The World According to Sroyon will henceforth use straight quotes and not curly quotes (unusually keen-eyed readers may have remarked on the straight-quote don't in the first sentence). I have been thinking about this for a while now, and I have concluded that the curly quotes in Verdana, currently my default font, are just too unsightly. Curly-quote lovers who wish to complain to the management are kindly directed to the comments section.
4 comments:
in my head, straight quotes = formatting error.
I use plain ASCII quotes because there are still too many places where curly quotes won't survive cutting and pasting.
Nice pic. Is it current--i.e., are you in Calcutta?
Is it still a chilchhad if only a portion of the (slanted) roof is higher than the rest?
@Meenakshi: My firm uses straight quotes though, in documents. On our PCs, the MS Word autocorrect feature whereby straight quotes are made curly is disabled.
@Tommy: Thanks! The pic is current -- taken on the day it was posted. I am in Calcutta on a 9-day visit. I think that's a chilchhad in your photo, but I don't speak with authority. I couldn't find a definition in any of our Bengali dictionaries.
you foren firms are crayzi.
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