The Shoppers Stop mystery

Is it Shoppers Stop or Shopper's Stop or Shoppers' Stop. Looks like even they can't decide. If I owned the retails chain, I would have fired my entire marketing/branding team for this fiasco. Let me show you what I mean.

This is their original logo. It clearly reads Shoppers' Stop.

Now for the new logo. The apostrophe disappears. The company is now called Shoppers Stop.





But it doesn't stop there. Their website is titled Welcome to Shopper's Stop. Ditto in the 'Ab








I am generally not a grammar stickler, but this is quite surprising as SS is a very reputed retail chains of India. Let's hope that they rectify the situation as soon as they can. Till then dumb Shoppers like me will wonder whether the company wants us to Stop and not come to their store.

For people interested in similar grammatical goof-ups, do read Eats, Shoots & Leaves by Lynne Truss.

To DK Sir, with love

Forgive my grief for one removed,
Thy creature, whom I found so fair.
I trust he lives in thee,
and there I find him worthier to be loved.

(from In Memoriam A. H. H. by Alfred Tennyson)

D. K. sir was my guru of Loyola. I was mortally scared of integrals in my 12th standard. Try as I might, I could never score well in Maths 2. I barely managed to pass in my 12th standard Maths prelim exams. But a few weeks under DK sir's guidance changed all that. He would teach me one chapter a day, explain all the basic theories again and again till I got the hang of them. Slowly and steadily my performance in Maths started improving and managed to get a good score in my 12th boards.

But DK sir was not just a teacher. He was a friend and a guide. He would always give students advice during classes. If anyone came late, he would say "you are going to become future doctor and engineer. you cannot come late when patient is dying". He made sure that we enjoyed his classes. He would never refuse to give us a free period and would take us to the ground to play games. He was the only teacher who used to attend all socials and rakshabandhans and enthusiastically take part in all games. He would always ask about all ex-students whenever I met him.

There is so much I wanted to say to him, starting with "thank you". Hope you can read this sir, wherever you are. I am very thankful for everything you did to help Aloka, me, and so many others survive through those harrowing months of 12th standard.

Mr. D. K. Shah was a maths teacher at St. Xavier's High School, Loyola Hall, Ahmedabad. He died on 18th April, 2008 in a horrific accident in Mumbai. Sir was going to retire in 2008-2009.