I remember the first time I encountered a Fancy Store in India. I was living in Varkala, Kerala and wanted to buy some elastic bands for my hair. Normally, I’d just get them from the supermarket. But not in India!
“Try the fancy store”, I was advised. Fancy store? Uh oh. What could that be? It turns out that there are in fact many fancy stores in India. Furthermore, I soon learned that if I couldn’t think of which shop to get an item from, I was likely to find it at a fancy store.
Some things that I’ve bought from a fancy store include:
- A plastic tailors tape measure.
- Shoe laces.
- Roll on antiperspirant.
- A child’s toy.
(The fancy store pictured above is in Manali, in northern India).
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{ 21 comments… read them below or add one }
Hey Sharell
Sometimes i wonder how such names emerged in Indian society. Names like “Fancy Store”, “Kitty party” etc . These are unique cases of giving the English language an Indian “twist” and naming day to day Indian things…
Its an interesting topic of study that deserves some attention.
By the way, i saw someone from mumbai visiting my blog. Was that u by any chance??
No, it wasn’t me but you just prompted me to check it out! I liked reading the 10 honest things about you. I can actually relate to you on a number of them, especially the daydreaming.
And the funny thing about these names is that they end up making us native English speakers terribly confused!
Thanks for visiting my blog.
lol
Among those things, number 2 relating to religion is an area of bit of a dilemma for me. i consider myself a PROUD HINDU with a secular outlook who take pride in India’s cultural and religious heritage but also sometimes become an atheist when i am really honest with myself.
Thank God(did i say God?), my dharmic hindu religion provides me the flexibility to THINK. Daydreaming is a great timepass…..
“”end up making us native English speakers terribly confused!”"
You know native Chinese people often get confused when they hear about “Manchurian Chicken” dish. Its actually invented by an Indian chef of Chinese origin in Kolkata when he was experimenting desi masala in chinese food
You lived in kolkata i am sure u know about Kolkata’s China town. Thats where it was invented.
Its really funny some times. Same is the case with roti in Caribbeans. Indian origin guys there have made roti a kind of fast food different from what we are used to in India.
So is a Fancy Store kind of like an state-side CVS?
Another English word, used in Indian context, native english speakers have difficulty grasping is “encounter” ….. infact we had Salman Rushdie come to our University and talk about a whole bunch of English words used uniquely in the Indian context.
IP – Well, I don’t think there’s a God as such either. It’s just an endless amount of cosmic energy and awareness. God is the name us humans have given to it to make it more “identifiable” and easier to relate to. That’s why I like Hinduism. There’s a god to pray to for so many different purposes.
I never made it as far as China town but Manchurian Chicken — there must be so many of these similar inventions!
PBG – That would’ve been one very interesting talk! Encounter? As in… “I had an encounter with…”? One big English word that Indians love to use is “felicitated”. Eg. “He was felicitated for his good efforts”. I don’t think I’ve ever used that word in my whole life!
Naomi – I’m not sure what a CVS is? Hopefully someone from the US can help with the comparison!
Its an entire CVS crammed into 100 sq feet… except for the pharmacy part.
A fancy store usually stocks stuff the storeowners assume a woman would want or care about.
But I don’t even know what a CVS is.
Obviously it’s something we’re badly missing in Australia!
Encounter as in “a known gangster had an encounter with the cops” … made famous by Mumbai cops …. I am sure you know by now
….
… CVS is a pharmacy chain in US … you kind of get some food stuff and other house hold items as well …
I thought “felicitation” was a common word
Ah, that sort of encounter!
Felicitation must be too much of a big word for the laid back Aussie vocabulary. It doesn’t extend very far! 
What about that breast cream they sell there?
Haven’t heard of that one! Will it make mine bigger or what?
hey this is a lovely blog and i have enjoyed reading it.
i hate to be a pedant but somebody points out that fancy stores are an indian twist — they aren’t really. and i don’t imagine kitty party is either.
fancy store is actually a holdover from the victorian era when things that might be calculated to appeal to women, or just seize the imagination generally were called fancies, e.g. lace, ribbons, buttons and that sort of thing. so by extension, naturally a fancy store sells that kind of stuff — only over the course of time it probably proved a lot more profitable to the owner to branch out into general grocery or provision type things, so that now you can find quite an assortment of stuff under a single roof. like “eve-teasing” it’s just another one of those words that have survived in india while its usage has ebbed away pretty much everywhere else, i suspect.
here is a link to a reference about a book called “handbook for the boy fancier” which uses the word in the sense i have been discussing, just in case you are interested — and which also points out that boy fancier today would be taken to refer to something that is pretty nearly illegal…
http://books.google.com.sg/books?id=vtChCoG6veMC&pg=PA193&lpg=PA193&dq=handbook+for+the+boy+fancier&source=bl&ots=LAT_TemHs3&sig=1pdwlZWlL6OnsB8-PD9zAPYlNSE&hl=en&ei=xhFcSsuqOJL_kAXqzaDnDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1.
at risk of having your eyes glaze over, let me also add that you can even see the book illustrated in another book, called Bizarre Books, by Brian Lake and Russell Ash.
cheers
clarence
Thanks Clarence! So much interesting information. It does make sense about the origins of the fancy store.
clarence fernandez
Pardon my ignorance.
Not bigger, Sharrell, but it is supposed to make them firmer. Surprised you’ve not seen it. Its in every store. You’ve seen it but didn’t know what it was.
I may have just glanced over it and not taken much notice since I don’t need that kind of assistance… but if it would make them grow, it might be a different story!
Very funny!