DAY 493

These painted doors are advertising a brand of tea. India always used to be covered in hand-painted lettering on shops and walls. A lot of it has been replaced with large printed acrylic/vinyl signs, especially in the cities and larger towns. Sigh. There's a great little film about this here (scroll down for the video).
This sign is actually quite a good lesson in the way written Hindi works. On the right, you can see the slightly cut off letters that makes up the brand name in English, 'Sufiyana', vertically. The same thing is reproduced in Hindi on either side of the cup. However, because of the way Hindi works, instead of letter by letter, the word is written syllable by syllable. From the top to the bottom: 'Su' 'Fi' 'Ya' 'Na'. This is because vowel sounds attach to the consonant in a different way to if they are independent. So they have to be written together.