Jhatpat India

The retroflex ‘la’ is a sound present in all the south Indian languages and those from the west of India, including Marathi

Have you ever wondered about the curious case of ‘r' and ‘la' in Indian languages? Most of the languages in India, despite their affiliation to four different language families (Indo-Aryan, Dravidian, Tibeto-Burman and Austro-Asiatic), share several phonetic features. Take Marathi, for instance. A defining feature is the frequent substitution of the consonant ‘la' in Sanskrit words with the retroflex lateral flap ‘'. So, when you say kamal (lotus) in Hindi and Marathi, the retroflex sound is distinct in the latter.

Software developer Ashris Choudhury long wondered why.

The 25-year-old Vizag-born developer and data visualiser researched major Indian languages and their phonetics online before he turned to coding to make a static map on the retroflex la. The caption of the post uploaded on various social media platforms, read: "The retroflex la is a sound present in all the south Indian and west Indian Languages - it is even present in the north Indian dialects of Himachal and Uttarakhand. Does your language have this sound?"

In this map, the score you see is the worst score that a state has got when judged against all the goals set by the United Nations

It was the perfect tease. He received 2,06,876 views on YouTube, with many netizens heaping praise on the detailing of the map's graphic.

The maps Choudhury has produced till date, using a mix of design and data, have earned him social media fame.

Choudhury started India in Pixels as a side project in early 2019. Having lived in various parts of southern India, thanks to his naval officer father, Choudhury was familiar with the Dravidian cultural landscape. Every new idea, he says, emerges from his curiosity. "I want to know everything. I was an only child deeply curious about India's cultures. I think this is what happens to children who shuttle between towns and grow up seeing everything change around them," he tells mid-day in a telephonic interview.

Ashris Choudhury

After securing a Bachelor's degree in architecture from IIT Kharagpur, he pursued a visiting studentship at MIT Media Lab in the US. "I had a Swades-like moment around that time," he says, referring to the Shah Rukh Khan-starrer. "I felt like I needed to come back to my roots. And so, after having plunged into the startup domain in India, I slowly began documenting everything interesting I discovered, for India in Pixels."

Being a techie, coding is a piece of cake for Choudhury. He procures information from government and academic websites which are open source, to create interactive maps. "There is so much information out there. I think up a topic and then go digging for data and figures. What started as a fascination for infographics, has now turned into a passion project." His first video was a flop, though. "My first post was on India's top 15 economically successful states from 1950 till date. No one saw it. A friend suggested that I make something for cricket lovers. I had 100k views in a week for a post on the top 20 cricketers ranked by total catches in ODIs [1971 to 2019]," he recollects.

The latest map, which was unveiled on the 75th Independence Day, is about India's crucial six digit numbers - the pin code system. Introduced by Shriram Bhikaji Velankar, former Addl. Secretary in the Ministry of Communications, pin codes were implemented across India on August 15, 1972. The objective was to simplify mail-sorting and speed up delivery. Choudhury made an insightful map with each dot denoting a different pin code of India. "People loved it, it's just so visually appealing. The pin codes were introduced some 50 years ago, and are still so relevant. That's what fascinated my followers."

Apart from using academic databases, Choudhury also relies on World Bank data. He does come across comments from other coders who usually express doubts over accuracy of the numbers. "It's a one-man army, I don't have a team to conduct research or surveys from scratch before making these maps. I rely entirely on government data, which I believe is accurate. All I do is type a code; it does the heavylifting thereon. I don't go and verify the data. I look at a source, see how the webpage is structured and then write a code which copies the information exactly and I always mention my source," he clarifies.

Having spent the last two years flirting with statistics and numbers, Choudhury thinks official information is scarce and the authorities need to expand sample collection. "Surveys are done with a minimal population. So, the sample size is very small usually. But that's not my problem to solve. What I can do is create a database of these maps so that researchers can refer to my website and get their job done faster. In India, we don't have a single platform for information. It's scattered."

It is at this point in the interview that this writer, who has been following India in Pixels for a while, remembers a fun map Choudhury created and released on August 4. It asks a pertinent question - what does your state suck the most at? The United Nations has set a series of goals for all nations of the world for us to have a better universe. These goals include reducing hunger, providing clean energy, aiming for gender equality and so on. India's NITI Aayog uses these goals to measure how our states are performing. In this map, the score you see is the worst score that a state has got among all its goals. Overall, India sucks the most at providing food. It has a high hunger level. Maharashtra, Gujarat and Karnataka have more hungry people, while Rajasthan, Punjab, Haryana and Uttarakhand fared lowest in gender equality. Forest and wildlife conservation is lowest in Jammu and Kashmir, whereas West Bengal, Uttar Pradesh and Bihar are failing at climate action.

"It has been a terrific journey. Within 40 days of launching my page on YouTube, I had 25,000 subscribers. Today, I have 84,000 followers on Instagram and 121k subscribers on YouTube. My goal is to grow these pages, and tell India's story one pixel at a time."

Did you know?

. Of all the 117 players who qualified for the Tokyo Olympics 2020, 25 per cent are from Haryana

. The states with higher percentage of circumcised men also reported lower than average percentage of HIV infected population

. In the year 2020, Facebook received 222K requests from governments requesting data from users