"Why did you stop?" the Lakh asks.
"You just ran a red light!" the Lakh says.
It is after all home to the lakh, for 100,000 and the crore, for 10m, along with the first nine numerals (despite their being mislabeled as "Arabic" by the West).
In addition the lakh and crore are still in widespread use in India.
In a different manifestation of technological progress, the country's largest private enterprise, Tata, recently unveiled the "one lakh car"; priced at the equivalent of $2,500, it is the world's cheapest.
The car is known as the "one lakh" car one lakh is 100,000 rupees, equivalent to around $2,100 when the car was first conceived four years ago.
In launching it, Tata Motors, part of India's largest private firm, will start a controversial trend.When it was first conceived, the 1 lakh (100,000 rupees) car was to have cost the equivalent of $2,000 before tax.
While on the 21st of July, 2014, Delhi Metro's ridership figure touched the high of 26.84 lakhs, on 4 August, it crossed the 27 lakh barrier to reach 27.05 lakhs.
Tata even plans to introduce the "One Lakh Car", an ambitious plan to make and sell a vehicle costing less than 100,000 rupees ($2,300).And this basic part of the car market is not just confined to the emerging world.
IN A previous post I wondered whether the "one-lakh car", as the Tata Nano is called, yet exists.
Any extra distance between the mother plant and its offspring will add to the cost of production, he points out, jeopardising the "one-lakh" price tag (100,000 rupees, or $2,300) that has made the Nano famous.
