In the movie Pi, the protagonist meets a numerologist searching for hidden numerical patterns in the Torah. Each Hebrew letter corresponds to a number. The true name of God is said to correspond to a 216-digit number. [Link]

Despite desi Americans’ dominance in spelling bees, our Bollybrethren are holding us back. Two new Bollywood flicks out this weekend, Zindaggi Rocks and Mera Dil Leke Dekkho, are the latest titles to be misspelled on purpose. They follow the path of alphabetical destruction wrought by Krrish, Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna, Viveik (née Vivek) Oberoi, Suniel (née Sunil) Shetty and Hrithik (usually Ritik) Roshan. K.Jo even names all his movies with ‘K,’ and several krappy movies later the joke is wearing thin.

If bad spelling guaranteed success in life, Dan Quayle would be king of the world. The surfeit of silent letters sits at the unhappy junction of filmi superstitiousness and numerology. Lage Raho Munna Bhai even tackled this spelling silliness by having the father of the female lead renounce the twinned K in the name of his business. Yes, Munna Bhai has elevated proper spelling into Gandhigiri (Gandhi-ness). Next thing you know, a swarm of foreign NGOs will buy ads in regional papers comparing numerology to sati.

It’s more like to dingleberries, if you ask me. In the transliteration from Hindi to English, there’s always a fudge factor, some wiggle room. You don’t need to add up the letters of ‘dingleberry’ to see that we need better spelling, not worse. That’s not harmonica virgins, that’s cryptography. The only hash one should see next to a film star’s name is the bag of weed on her bedroom table.