Gole Bazaar 1960s - GOG

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Then there was this Fancy Shop at the end of the High Street manned by a Punjabi gent (later it got vertically split into two between brothers, one still Fancy and the other literally a Wool-Gatherer).

I just now asked online Webster what a fancy shop is; and he says there is no such word in his dictionary but advised me to look up: 1. fancy up 2. fancy man 3. fancy Dan. This feature of online Webster always bugs me. When I ask for Sastry, he corrects me as Pastry...I think it is downright impertinent...if he doesn't know he should say so and not lecture me. It is like one of my students asks about photinoes and I suggest he go to Prof HNA (who is the local expert in photonics...as different as chalk from cheese).

Incidentally, DB was once much amused by the anecdote told him by his Nephew who was a latoo at KGP in Somnath's batch. Apparently Nephew opted for Solid State Special and his Teacher happened to have his knowledge bounded by the elementary book of Kittel. And the Teacher was going into rhapsodies about phonons, magnons, excitons, plasmons, polarons and all their cousins, near and distant.

And at the end of the semester, the Nephew asked his Teacher:

"Sir, you have told us everything about the properties of these fancy particles, but you didn't tell us where all these -ons are coming from!" (He meant there was no mention of Field Quantization).

In a Faculty Meeting chaired by the HoD, Prof KVR, talking about revision of syllabus, the same Teacher proposed his version which had Quantum Electrodynamics coming much before Dirac Equation. These aberrations occur with teachers who are as old as Father William. I know this from first hand experience. And so, I was waiting for young blood to join our Dept and as soon as a fertile crop were recruited, I happily withdrew from advanced courses and reverted to Prep, First Year and Second Year B Techs...

Anyway I just Googled for "Fancy Shop" and got 627,000 results in 0.18 seconds; and all of them Indian stores, mostly South Indian...nice addition to Indian-English vocabulary.

This Fancy Shop had its banner reading "GOG Stores". And I couldn't make out what this GOG meant since I was reading it as the 'gog' in the South Indian pronunciation of Vincent van Gogh of the Lust for Life fame...I mean like in 'goggles'.

I was too timid to ask the Punjabi owner why GOG, which GOG, and how GOG? One day however Chawlasab was with us and I asked him to find out from the shop-owner why he named it GOG. And Chawlasab at once switched into koanna, kiththey, munda, kudi, sat shri akal stuff and in half a minute the two were shaking hands and embracing each other like long-lost brothers.

All I could gather was that the Punju Shop-Owner asked Chawlasab to read aloud the letters GOG one by one, which he did and it came out as:

"Jee-o-Jee" (meaning: "Long Live Buddy!")

The other morning my son took his wife and Ishani (first time for her) to a Jubilee Hills Multiplex showing the latest blockbuster titled: "Ra.One" and he told me there is also a "G.One" in that film; and he was sure his ancient dad won't be able to decipher the two mod words...he didn't know about the lesson I got in Gole Bazaar's GOG decades before he was in the making...

I also read "Peasmith" when I was just 18...

And then this KGN: Suddenly new Muslim shop names sprang up here and even in remote places like Gudur going: "KGN Meat Shop", "KGN Electronics", "KGN Xerox"...

I thought they were a Chain. I was mistaken.

Talking of Chains there is this Readers Digest joke of a mom in Tennessee driving her two sons (6 and 4) out of town on a long holiday. The younger one exclaims: "There are so many St Peter's Cathedrals in this route" and his wise brother explains: "They are a Chain"

And the couple of my friends whom I asked about what KGN stands for couldn't help. I refused to Google and tried figuring it out by myself and I did succeed...it is short for Khwaja Garib Nawaz, the famous Sufi Saint Moinuddin Chisti of Ajmeer Dargah...


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