Sayani Dutta. (Sudeshna Banerjee)

She may not be a potential Spelling Bee champion, but Sayani Dutta can lleps sdrow sdrawkcab. That is, this 23-year-old can spell words backwards as quickly as one spells it left to right.

“I started doing it to pass time while commuting. I was in Class VII or VIII then. I would look at the hoardings and try to spell the words backwards,” says Sayani, who has just completed her MSc in environmental science from a Pune institute and is starting on a research project. But the shy, self-effacing girl kept this ability to herself. “I never thought this was a special gift worth telling people about.”

It was her father Abhijeet Dutta, a resident of New Ballygunge, who egged her on. “I suppose I grew more confident after learning close to 3,000 new words while preparing for GRE some years back and seeing that I could spell less common words backwards too. But I need to know the correct spelling of a word to be able to do this.”

She chose to spell 20 words backwards without pausing. Nineteen were six, seven or eight letters long. The 20th word, the only one she got wrong by missing out a syllable in a hurry, was “disappointment” — with 14 letters.

Sayani is adept with proper nouns too, spelling both Mamata Banerjee and Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee correctly, right to left.

An Indian from coastal Karnataka, Shishir Hathwar, has made it to the Guinness World Records in March 2011 by spelling 50 words backwards the quickest. The longest words he was given to spell were eight letters long.

“I see a word as a graphic unit in my mind,” says Sayani, on being asked how she does it. The first step is naming the number of letters in a word, after which she rattles off the reverse spelling.

She can write as quickly too in the reverse. “Have a good day,” one wishes her as she prepares to leave. “yad doog a evah,” she quickly writes down, mistaking the parting wish as a queue to switch to the back gear again.

Heritage wheels

The elaborate, wrought iron trellis wears a coat of yellow ochre, the wooden portico has been scrubbed and painted. The heritage façade of 19 Jawaharlal Nehru Road, alias Leslie House, has had a facelift even as the rest of the building stands as dilapidated as ever.

The Renault showroom at Leslie House

French car maker Renault India inaugurated its first showroom in the city at this heritage address that once housed Austin Distributors. In the 1950s, it had turned into a Hindustan Motors dealership. Later when HM started marketing Mitsubishi cars, Austin Distributors sold Cedias and Lancers along with Royal Enfield motorbikes from a nearby address.

Sanjoy Patodia, managing director, Renault Chowringhee, says: “This place was hired by my grandfather R.P. Patodia from a Bengali gentleman in 1938. It used to be a franchisee of the British car company, the Austin, which sold imported cars.”

Once the import restrictions set in, Sanjay’s father, B.P. Patodia, started the HM dealership.

Inaugurating the dealership, Renault India vice-president (sales & marketing), Len Curran, says: “This is our only dealership housed in a heritage building. We encourage preservation of heritage structures and our dealer principal Sanjay Patodia has managed to retain the heritage character of the building while giving it a modern look. While all Renault dealerships have to look similar and sport uniform signages, in the case of this heritage dealership we had to modify the frontal signage to allow visibility of the structure.”

To remind Calcuttans of the old showroom, the word Austin has been retained on the façade. Spread over 2,500sq ft, Renault Chowringhee will display four cars. The rest of the 9,000sq ft space will be shared by the Hindustan Motors and Royal Enfield showrooms.

Phone pests

They may or may not cause cancer but there are few other things of everyday use that cause us more irritation. Most of us do not know how to stop the pesky calls, unwanted caller tunes and unsolicited astrological advice, sports news and jokes that cellphone service providers subject us to. An NGO, Thoughts, has stepped forward to raise awareness against such malpractice.

“Most of us do not rush to consumer courts because Rs 15-20 are being deducted every month as charges for services we do not want. But in the long run, the small amounts add up to a hefty sum. Most cellphone service providers have done away with toll-free helplines. So to deactivate an unwanted service, one has run up a bill waiting for and talking to customer service executives of the service provider,” said Joeeta Basu, the president of Thoughts.

Prepaid customers face more problems since their balance gets deducted automatically.

To raise awareness, the forum also plans to organise a silent protest march. They are contemplating a PIL too.

Shamin Ahmed, the state head of International Human Rights Protection Association, and Alok Das, industrial adviser to the central government, attended the event.

(Contributed by Sudeshna Banerjee, Anasuya Basu and Chandreyee Ghose)