Sea Of Poppies Part 35

chota/chhota/choota/: Scrawled upon the back of the two of clubs in Neel's Jack-Chits are these words: 'Chhota is to burra as peg is to mast: hence the common Laskari locution chota-peg, often used synonymously with faltu-dol.'

chota-hazri: See above. 'How Barrre & Leland have managed to come to the conclusion that a chota-hazri corresponds to the "auroral mint julep or pre-prandial c.o.c.ktail of Virginia" I will never understand, for it usually consists of nothing more than toast and tea.'

chownee (*The Glossary):'A great pity that this fine Hind. word for "military encampment" came to be replaced by the dull Anglo-Saxon "cantonment".'

chuddar/chadar: 'In no field of meaning has English relied more heavily on migrants than in referring to the clothing of womens' heads, shoulders and b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Yet, even having absorbed shawl, chuddar/chadar, and doo -putty/dupatta, it still has no word for that part of the sari that serves the same function, for both ghungta and chal remain strangers to the Oracle. The c.u.mbly/kambal ("blanket") can scarcely be offered as an alternative.'

chuldan (*Roebuck): See choola/chula.

chull (*The Barney-Book): 'Barrre & Leland reveal their ignorance by giving this the gloss of "make haste", a meaning that belongs more to the imperative jaw! Chull has much more the sense of the French allez or the Arabic yalla. One searches in vain for a good English equivalent, "come on" being hardly as expressive.'

chup/choops (*The Barney-Book): 'Another word that has migrated through the nursery, being one of the few exhortations to silence that can be considered polite.'

chupow/chupao (*The Glossary): 'Despite its present currency, this emigrant is unlikely to find a permanent seat in the House of Verbs, since it serves no function that is not already discharged by the English "to hide".'

chute/choot: 'This word's popularity is largely due to the one notable advantage that it possesses over other more specific anatomical terms: to wit, that it can be applied to all human beings, irrespective of gender, in the full confidence that the subject will be in possession of a few such. This is possibly why it enjoys such widespread use, both in Hind. and English, the difference being that in English it is rarely used in the absence of some other paired element (ban-/betee-etc.). One exception is the cant term chutier, which is used abusively to imply an exces sive endowment in regard to this aspect of the anatomy.' See also banchoot/barnshoot etc.

cobbily-mash (*The Glossary): 'This was, of course, not a mash at all, but a preparation of dried fish (being a corruption of the Bengali term shutki-maach.)'

c.o.c.kup: This was of course one of many words that perished in the abattoir of Victorian prudery. Being uncommonly fond of the fish to which it referred, lates calcarifer (bhetki/beckty), Neel refused to recognize that this term was greatly endangered: he certainly bears some of the responsibility for its extinction.

compound/kampung: There was for long a feeling within the family that this word ought not to be included in the Chrestomathy, since the fact of its having gained entry into the Oracle in both its forms would provide a convincing refutation of Neel's pet theory (according to which, words could never migrate in pairs - see bandar). These anxieties were set at rest when a wordy-wallah pointed out that these words are neither h.o.m.onyms nor synonyms: they are merely variant spellings of the same word.

conker/kunkur (*The Glossary): 'This word has nothing whatever to do with water-or horse-chestnuts. It is a corruption of the Hind. kankar, "gravel", and is used in the same sense.'

consumah/consummer/khansama: See bobachee.

coolin/kulin: 'In no way to be confused with "coolie", this was the word used to refer to the highest rung of certain castes.' A contracted form has recently gained some currency in cla.s.sy circles: "cool".'

cot: See charpoy.

cotia (*The Glossary): A vessel from the Kerala coast that was only rarely to be sighted on the Hooghly.

cow-chilo (*The Linkister): 'Often have I heard this item of the South China patois being used to disparage the Chinese and their regard for women. Yet the expression is merely a badly matched pairing of words, the first being a corruption of the Cantonese kai.'

cranny/karani (*The Glossary): See carcanna.

c.u.mbly/kambal: See chuddar.

c.u.mra/kamra/camera (*The Glossary, Roebuck): Neel gave the credit for the introduction of this item of Portuguese nautical usage (camara), into the languages of Hind., English included. In its original nautical sense, it was used of course to mean 'cabin', but by virtue of conveniently expressing the idea of part.i.tioned s.p.a.ce, it has reverted to the sense of its Latin avatar, in which it meant 'room' or 'chamber'. 'The curious use of gol-kamra (literally "round-room") to mean "drawing-room" is unlikely to survive.'

c.u.mshaw: See baksheesh.

cunchunee/kanchani (The Glossary): See bayadre.

cursy/coorsy/kursi (*The Barney-Book, Roebuck, The Glossary): From the Jack-Chits. 'This Laskari word is not derived from the common Hind. word for "chair" (kursi) as many suppose: it is, in my opinion, a corruption of the English nautical term "crosstrees", for it too refers to the perch that is formed by the junction of a yard and a mast. But the resemblance is not accidental, for it is in this seat that the lascar enjoys the few moments of leisure that fall to his lot.'

cushy/khush/khus.h.i.+: 'In Laskari this was the equivalent of the English nautical usage "cheerily". To the lascar, then, goes the credit for inventing the English meaning of this word, which was carried onsh.o.r.e by sailors.'

dabusa (*Roebuck): 'Roebuck avers that any cabin may be so designated, but it is a truism that every vessel is a world unto itself, with its own tongues and dialects - and on the Ibis this term was applied, always and exclusively, to the "tween-deck", which should properly have been the "beech-ka-tootuk".'

dacoit: 'This word', writes Neel, 'although universally known, is frequently misused, for the term applies, by law, only to miscreants who belong to a gang of at least five persons.'

dadu (*The Barney-Book): 'Strange that this English gypsy word for father should be the same as the Bengali for "grandfather"; no less strange that the Eng. gypsy for mother, dai/dye, should be the same as the common Hind./Urdu for midwife.'

daftar/dufter: This was another word which had already, in Neel's lifetime, yielded to an ungainly rival, 'office'. This too carried down with it a lashkar of fine English words that were used for its staff: the clerks known as crannies, the mootsuddies who laboured over the accounts, the shroffs who were responsible for money-changing, the khazana-dars who watched over their treasuries, the hurkarus and peons who delivered messages, and of course, the innumerable moons.h.i.+es, dubashes and druggermen who laboured over the translation of every doc.u.ment. It was the pa.s.sing of the last three, all concerned with the work of translation, that most troubled Neel; those were the words he would cite when Englishmen boasted to him of the absorptive power of their language: 'Beware, my friends: your tongues were flexible when you were still supplicants at the world's khazanas. Now that you have the whole world in a stranglehold, your tongues are hardening, growing stiffer. Do you ever count the words you lose every year? Beware! Victory is but the vanguard of decay and decline.'

dai/dye (*The Barney-Book): See dadu.

dak/dawk: Neel believed that this word would eventually yield to the English 'post' even in India, but he was convinced also that it would find its way into the Oracle, not on its own steam, but because of its innumerable compounds - dawk-bungalow, dawkdubba ('post-box') etc.

dam/daam (*The Glossary): 'Sad indeed that India's currency took its name from rupya (Skt. "silver") rather than the more accurate Hind. dam, "price". I well remember a time when an adhelah was half, a paulah a quarter and a damri an eighth of a dam. A tragedy indeed that the word, like the coin, was driven to beggary by a counterfeit - in this instance, by the misinterpreting of the Duke of Wellington's comment of dismissal ("I don't give a dam"). What the Duke had meant to say, of course, was something in the order of "I don't care a tu'penny" (dam), but instead he bears the guilt of having put into circulation the d.a.m.nable "d.a.m.n". At this remove we can only speculate on how different the fate of the word would have been had he said, instead, "I don't give a damri."' On the margins of this note an anonymous descendant has scribbled: 'At least Uncle Jeetu wouldn't have ruined the last scene of Gone With the Wind by shouting at Rhett Butler: "A dam is what you don't give, you idiot - not a 'd.a.m.n' ..."'

daroga: See chokey.

dashy (*The Barney-Book): See bayadre. 'This word is said to be derived from devadasi (temple dancer), hence the frequent pairing debbies and das.h.i.+es.'

dastoor/dastur: Because Neel always gave precedence to nautical usages he a.s.sumed that this word would come into the Oracle because of the Laskari usage, in which it was the equivalent of 'stu'nsail/studdingsail' (see also dol). He allowed, as a long shot, that its h.o.m.onym, which designated a Parsi religious functionary, might also stand a good chance of inclusion. He was wrong on both counts: the Oracle unaccountably has chosen to gloss it as 'custom' or 'commission', from which usage it derives dastoori, destoory etc. These last Neel ruled out, because their meaning was so close to bucksheesh.

dawk: See chit.

dekko, dikk, deck, dekho: Neel took bitter exception to all attempts to attribute this word to English Gypsy slang, insisting that it was a direct and recent borrowing of the Hind. dekho, 'to see'.

devi, debi, debbie: 'In English usage, the Hind. word for "G.o.ddess" acquired a wholly different connotation (for which see bayadre). The Laskari devi, on the other hand, was a corruption of the English "davit".'

dhobi: 'The mystery of laundering.'