Guess states in India

Just after finishing a previous post on guessing the states in the U.S, I decided to play a similar game - this time with India. I gave myself 10 minutes to guess the states and union territories in India. I started off without even knowing exactly how many states and union territories India has - my count always goes back to my my class IV, when as a 10-year old, I was taught that India has (at that time) 22 states and 9 union territories. I'll carry that count to my grave - I just don't seem to forget it. The 9 union territories included Goa, where I grew up as a child. Things changed since then - some union territories became states - my very own Goa (sorry Andhra Pradesh - nothing against you :-) became the 25th state, perhaps in 1986 or so. Some other states got carved out from larger states.

My score:

• 27 out of 28 states AND

• 6 out of 7 union territories in 5 minutes.

The states I could not guess: Manipur - Jeez, how did I miss that - I always remember "7-sister states" of the North East - and when I got the count to 6, I knew I was missing a state - just couldn't figure out which one. Saif Siddiqui is going to kill me for this.

The union territories I could not guess: Dadra and Nagar Haveli - hmm, it's alright.


My own thoughts on my approach to guessing and how I fell short?
My approach is always the same - have a mental map of the country, in this case India, and start identifying states starting from a certain region (North/South/East/West). In this case, I started from the south of India, moved upwards to the West, then the North, and then the East. It was when I reached Delhi that I finally thought - is it a state by now, or still a union territory? I went on nevertheless with some technical faults in my guessing, all of which I'll explain later in this post. Immediately to why I fell short?

Manipur - I probably would have guessed it right had I gone with the approach of remembering my college-mates. For those that do not know me in person, I studied at Regional Engineering College, Trichy (now christened National Institute of Technology). The college has students from all over the country - and people remember each other by nicknames and by the states they came from. That's why I said - Saif Siddiqui is going to kill me - he came from the north-eastern state of Manipur.

Dadra and Nagar Haveli - no chance of me placing that on the map of India - I know the territory (it was in the list of 9 union territories back in the 80s) but .. naah, just missed it.

Some other technical faults in my guessing - all of which I am counting in my favor (wink :-):

• I didn't know whether Chandigarh, Delhi and Pondicherry (aka Puducherry) were states or union territories. They were all trying to become states - they are all still union territories.
  
• I mixed Punjab and Haryana together - not knowing whether they were still one state or two states. I probably should have guessed they split - probably way back in the 90s. I say so because I had collegemates from Punjab and collegemates from Haryana - back in the 90s.
• I guessed Uttaranchal instead of Uttarkhand
• I guessed Pondicherry instead of Puducherry