4. Weight Measurement
Metric system: gram, kilogram (1000 gm), milligram (1/1000th of a gm) etc
Imperial system: ounces, pound (16 ounces), stones (14 pounds) etc
iMetric system: all of the above + some traditional Indian units. Rules for when to use which units for weight –
#1 Except in special circumstances, as mentioned in the next rules, things are measured in grams and kilograms. For example, you might yourself weigh 60 kgs and might want to buy 200 grams of ginger from the weekly vegetable market.
#2 In the specific case of buying wool, ounces and pounds are used. I remember my childhood days when my father would go to the wool store in winters to buy bowls of wool for my mother’s knitting projects and the shopkeeper would say – “This is authentic Australian wool! Soft as butter, feet it! A bit expensive though, 150 rupees an ounce!” (or whatever the price was). I was too little to know why the wool was almost always Australian or why the unit was ounce.
#3 When shopping for gold, you must use the ancient Indian unit of ‘tola‘ which is apparently now standardized as 11.6638038 grams. The hundredth part of Tola, called ‘Ratti‘ is also used by jewelers. Fun fact: Ratti is based on the seeds of a pea/bean plant and is a remnant of the Indus valley civilization. Other related units are ‘chatak‘ (different from the Bengali unit for area) which is equal to 5 tolas or 58.32 grams, ‘pav‘ (4 chataks or ~250 grams), and ‘ser‘ (4 pav or ~1000 grams). This last one appears in many Hindi/Urdu stories from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. And ‘chatak’ is used by many rural people as a metaphor for “a very small quantity”.
5. Temperature Measurement
Imagine this. An Indian friend tells you a story of him going to pilgrimage in Kedarnath. “It was freaking freezing! In my hometown, I have never seen a temperature below 5 but the temperature in Kedarnath was -10 degrees.” Then the same friend tells you one day “Yesterday I had to go to the doctor’s. I had a fever of 102 degrees!”
“102 degrees!” you are shocked and wonder why the friend hasn’t spontaneously combusted yet. He hasn’t because of the temperature measurement peculiarities of the iMetric system!
Metric System: degree Celsius (and Kelvin for very scientific conversations)
Imperial System: degree Fahrenheit (By the way, have you ever read the history of Fahrenheit and how scientists came to “mark the scale”. It’s a super confusing story, so confusing that to this day I am not sure if the Fahrenheit scale even makes any sense!)
iMetric System: both of the above with very specific rules –
#1 Degree Celsius is used officially for pretty much everything – weather report on TV, teaching metal melting points to kids in a science lab etc. For example, the “record-breaking winter” in Delhi is reported as -1 degree (Celsius).
#2 One exception to the above rule is body temperature measurement which is unequivocally measured in Fahrenheit, e.g. a “102 degree fever”. If a doctor were to tell a patient’s temperature in degree C, the doctor would be considered either a quack or an idiot or both.
Funny (and tragic) thing though is that most people don’t even realize that it’s two different units they are using. Or maybe it was just that one fool who never did – me. For close to 20 years of my life, I never realized that a 100 deg for water-boiling, as written in my book, was not the same as 100 deg for fever. Also, even when I realized it, I didn’t question the usage of two different units at all. “It’s the way it is!”
6. Money Measurement and Counting
Metric and Imperial Systems: When it comes to counting and defining money, all countries in the world use the decimal system, i.e. a counting and division system based on 10, 100 and 1000s. Okay, that’s not totally true. There are two exceptions – Mauritiana and Madagascar, whose currencies are theoretically non-decimal. Why only theoretically? Because the (non-decimal) sub-units are too small to be used in practice.
The decimal system dominates the world of money and counting in general. Even the very-loyal-to-Imperial-units-countries like the UK have long redefined their currency to be a 100-based system. So, a modern British pound has 100 pence as compared to the old Pound which had 20 shillings (and 1 shilling = 12 pennies).
iMetric System: Indian currency system is also decimal. Though, it wasn’t always that way. Before 1957, an Indian Rupee had 16 “annas” and 1 anna was 6 “paisas”. Even after the decimalization of the currency, it took decades upon decades to root out the anna-paisa based thinking from people’s minds. I remember that even up until the mid 1990s, many people from rural areas used the terms “chaar-anna” (4 annas) for a 25 (decimal) paisa coin and “aath-anna” (8 annas) for 50p. Again, it didn’t hurt anyone or caused any confusion because the buyer and the seller both knew what was meant.
While the term “paisa” has been retained in the INR (Indian New Rupee) where 1 Rupee is 100 Paisas, the term “anna” is still used in idioms and figures of speeches. For example – a very cheap and low-quality thing can be said to be “worth 2 annas”. There are other money terms that are also used in everyday phrases, such as “Taka“. Taka was a currency in eastern parts of India. It is now the name of the official currency of Bangladesh (which was an eastern part of pre-independence India).
In the context of counting, the most unique part of the iMetric system though is the terms used for big sums. While most of the westernized world uses a system of multiplying by 1000 and terms like millions, billions (UK and US have difference in ‘billion’ too; US billion is 1000 million but UK billion is a million million), and trillions, India uses a system of multiplying by 100 (the separating commas are also placed after 2 digits), with specific terms like ‘lakh‘ (100,000), ‘crore‘ (100 lakhs), ‘arab‘ (100 crores) and such. And they are deeply embedded in Indian culture.
