Sir,

This refers to the write-up titled “City’s booming stationery business now stationary” (Star of Mysore dated Sept. 2).

A stationery store situated near my residence has on its name-board spelt ‘stationery’ as ‘stationary.’ When I had pointed out this spelling mistake to the person running the establishment years ago he brushed aside my pointing out the mistake and said that there was nothing wrong in the spelling.

At that time I also thought that he was perhaps right in the sense that the shop was ‘stationary’ and not mobile. Nobody had imagined at that time that years later the world would one day be afflicted by a deadly virus named Coronavirus which would leave millions dead and deprive millions others of their livelihoods.

The owner of the stationery shop perhaps had the prescience to predict that the stationery business would one day become stationary and had appropriately used the word stationary!

This also reveals the beauty of the English language where the change of a single letter could drastically change the meaning but also the lives of the people.

– K.R. Jayaprakash Rao, Nazarbad, 3.9.2021

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