The net is surely the greatest communicative tool ever invented. it is of path, an extension of the human discovery of writing and then printing. It has, as evidenced with the aid of the omnipresence of Google, of Wikipedia, of facebook and a hundred other ‘applications‘, revolutionised communication globally. It hasalso given rise to the best outpouring of triviality and foolishness that the sector has ever known.
Small communicate is not new. It has sustained dinner events and gatherings from the beginning of human time. inside the starting become the word, as the Bible puts it, but it does not say if it becomesignificant, purposeful, and sincere or had surpassed through a process of relevance and verificationcommonly known as modifying. Newspapers in trendy have factors of view and but a whole lot they protest their neutrality and objectivity, are biased towards those editorial (and every now and thenproprietorial – step forward R Murdoch!) perspectives.
The net is exciting and unreliable. Bloggers and conspiracy theorists, preachers of hate, seekers for love, fraudsters, and people with more vanity than sense, idlers and charlatans fill our on-line world with their unfiltered contentions, ploys and babble. Like newspapers and periodicals, they increase a ‘following’ whoseextent depends sometimes on the viciousness of the blog and every so often, irrespective of the worthof the phrases, at the celebrity reputation of the blogger.
phrases are born, stay and die.
To mark 37 years of mid-day’s record of words from Mumbai, here are 37 words that I companion with Thehuge Mango, as people might call this city if it belonged to them. And are not we happy it doesn’t.
BOMBAY The call itself has disputed origins. It turned into first used as a harbour for Portuguese tradingships and that they referred to as the islands that sheltered them from the Arabian Sea’s vicissitudes and tides and the harbouring inlet ‘Bom Baya’. In Portuguese, this will no longer imply an awesome bayhowever alternatively an excellent ‘beach‘. So is the Shiv Sena’s insistence that the word Bombay is a perversion of Mumbai, so known as, due to the temple of Mumba Devi, which existed right here, longbefore Portugal become a country? The island/islands have given their call to numerous ingredients.
BOMBAY DUCK isn’t a duck, it is an eel, bit it is so known as because the Brits who built the railways in the 1840s and 50s had consignments of the stinking fish packed in railway booths to be transported inland. And because the British disdained to name the consignments stinking fish, they referred to as them Bombay Dak – the Bombay Mail.
BOMBAY ALOO. Open any famous book of Indian recipes and there it’s miles, the concoction that becamelikely one of the first road ingredients. Of path, it should be called Bombay Batata, that’s the Portugueseword adopted into Marathi for potatoes.
PAOON or a loaf of bread, the dough for which become kneaded on an commercial scale through stamping on it with, we are hoping, smooth toes. as a result, “paoon (foot) roti”. The Portuguese adopted thephrase after it became invented on India’s West Coast, even though a few could hotly dispute that chronology.
PAO BHAJI is any other Bombay street meals, the equal of the Italian Panini (which I continually ideaturned into the call of the renowned Sanskrit grammarian) and now popular all over India andinternationally in Indian eating places.
BUNGALOW changed into invented in Mumbai to intend a ‘Bengal-style‘ residence as the British, onacquiring Bombay as a part of Charles II’s dowry, transferred this architectural fashion from their earlieragreement in Bengal. In what were then the a long way-reaches of the island, away from the citadel place, there have been respectively seven bungalows and four bungalows and the neighbourhoods round them stillhold those names.
MUTTON is the phrase my mother and grandmother and all of Bombay used and makes use of for goat’s meat. The phrase in English actually means ‘old sheep’ – not anything to do with goats – which is any other species altogether. British memsahibs likely commenced calling goat’s meat “mutton” whilst serving it to their sahibs, who may additionally have been reluctant to consume goat chops – of which there are none in England however would readily dig into mutton ones. The West Indian colonies were extra sincere. In Trinidad and Jamaica, they consume “curry goat” with enjoy.
COOLIE is the prevalent and impolite phrase for an Indian labourer who lifts masses. In Bombay, and later Mumbai, it have become the specific and in part sanitised phrase for the red-shirted luggage attendants at the superb railway terminus now referred to as Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus however previously Victoria Terminus and colloquially Bori-Bunder – the region where sacks (bori) of shipment were unloaded.
BUD BUD is the Marathi colloquialism for talking garbage, a type of ‘blah blah’ or ‘yackety-yak’. when I first taught in a London college, the racist youngsters could say, ‘bud-bud’ as a parody of Indian accents.interestingly, the cook of my family in Pune, while i was however a boy, could parody English, which hefailed to speak, with the sounds “feesh-fosh peesh posh” and every so often “Waat ees dees? Komdee Ka piece!”
BOLLYWOOD is a word for the popular movies of the Mumbai industry. Its genesis is clear however ifutilization have been consistent and logical, as no language’s utilization is, the enterprise and itsmerchandise would be labelled Mollywood. although it’d be outrageous to name, collectively, the filmsof Satyajit Ray, Mrinal Sen, Rituparno Ghosh and others ‘Kollywood’.
BHASSEIN become, in step with my faculty history books, the northern part of Bombay where the islands joined the mainland. all through my formative years, I appeared in vain for the fragment of the metropolisthat retained the name and simplest realised later that Bhassein became the anglicised perversion of Vashiwhere the creek isolating the ‘island’ from the mainland continues to be referred to as by using that call.
BOMBAY desires become Andrew Lloyd Webber’s failure of a London musical that lost cash inside theunited kingdom and closed early within the united states as there had been now not enough Indiantourists to fill the theatres. Bombay Nightmares can also have haunted the losers.
SANDRA FROM BANDRA become the slightly ironic, teasing call given to any younger woman of the Catholic religion. There had been other impolite phrases for the Christian ladies of Bombay, Goan, East Indian or maybe of Anglo-Indian descent. ‘Chutney Mary’ become one in every of them, and sarcastically, it turned into adopted because the call of a now well-known and rich Indian restaurant in London.
TOWERS OF SILENCE is the English call for the structures on which we, Parsis, divulge the bodies of theuseless to be disposed of in an ecologically- friendly manner by using being eaten via scavenging birds. The English phrase was certainly coined in Bombay, the Persian term dokhma being used earlier thanParsi migration to Brit-dominated Bombay.
VILE PARLE in north Bombay is known as, they are saying, after the 2 temples of Vileshwar and Parleshwar, but it also housed the manufacturing unit of Parle confectionery, making sweets and biscuitsstarted out by the Chauhan family in 1929. So, was Parle named after the district or changed into the term‘Ville’ the Frenchified usage meaning Parle Township?
In my boyhood, the ‘street‘ phrase or word with which to tease bald human beings became taklya, which ofpath, became literal. The metaphoric utilization was calling a bald person (or shouting after one in the road) CARROM BOARD – the vibrant surface of the striker recreation.
DISHOOM is the onomatopoeic sound for Bollywood violence, shootings and beatings-up – the “bang bang” or “sock, pow!” of Indian cinema. The word has now been followed because the name of a series of verypopular eating places in London which, deliberately feature Mumbai cafe themes and menus, theirfixtures being modelled at the Irani restaurants of Colaba and Byculla.
anxiety NAHIN LENEKA is another Anglo-followed perversion attributed to Bollywood scripts and Bambaiya (a verbal invention itself) slang. Its meaning is amply clean, though the strategy of avoiding pressureisn’t always defined.
item wide variety is another Bombay Bollywood invention for the music-out-of-context brought to a moviefor in basic terms commercial motives. i have now even heard cosmopolitan filmmakers in the West use the Mumbai-originated time period.
SHRI 420 is the call of a well-known Raj Kapoor movie and refers to the characterisation of a rogue, the numerals regarding segment 420 of the Indian Penal Code covering offences referring to cheating and dishonestly inducing transport of belongings, and results in punishments of fines. it’s far universally used in India however become increased in repute through Kapoor’s film and become the romantic delusionof the lovable rascal.
BREACH sweet has not anything to do with a candy with attractive gaps. It changed into where the Arabian Sea breached the land towards the south of Bombay Island and the candy is probably an anglicised perversion of the word ‘khadi’ which means a watery gap.
TIME bypass is what the peanut sellers on Mumbai’s suburban trains shout to sell their paper-cones of unshelled, roasted produce. it’s likely the primary time a food has been called via an interest that characterises its guidance for consumption.
PREPONE, UPGRADATION or even MATRIMONIAL are words invented or pioneered by means of English language newspapers and courses, i’d wager first from Bombay. You won’t find them inside the mum or dad or within the new york instances though all three phrases are practical and beneficial. Soadditionally with the Indian-newspaper expression of MISCREANTS ABSCONDING for criminals who haveescaped the police.
TAPORI. Leaving the erudite offices of Mumbai’s publications and wandering into the street, one encounters, as i have during my brief and satisfied life, the argot of the Tapori. it’s a phrase that sometranslate as vagabond, but is closer in that means to what inside the US is called ‘road‘!
The phrases generated through the Mumbai avenue – from BOSSY to address any familiar or evenstrange male, to the slightly sly and insinuating, very Parsi however now common, SAALA – have, as we are saying inside the net age ‘gone viral’ as a minimum in elements of India. Delhi university couldreplacement ‘guru’ for ‘bossy’ and the street form might unavoidably be ‘yaar’. the opposite phrases of Tapori-communicate that come to mind are the very Mumbai KHALI PILLY which sometimes comes welded to BOM MARTHAI – which put together is the accusation that you are full of sound and fury signifyingnothing – as Shakespeare might say.
The TAPORI enquiry may begin with the word, ‘KAIKO’ which, fascinatingly turned into adopted by usingRudyard Kipling in a poem known as route Marchin’ in which the refrain goes:
“while the large Drum says With ‘is ‘rowdy-dowdy-dow!’- Kaiko kiskeywaasthey, do not you humsey aagey jao?”
And having a bet on ny Cotton figures become invented on Bombay road corners and the game becomeknown as SATHTHA PUNCHA. It came to an quit while the Russians launched Sputnik and the rumourspread that the satellite tv for pc changed into transmitting the actual numbers in an on the spot to the street bookies.
KUT LEY is the Mumbai word for ‘wander away‘. it could be translated if expressed mildly as meaning‘enjoy a departure’ or, in its more competitive form: “go some distance and fornicate”.
not to be careworn with cutting that is a photo word for filling the bought cup with most effective 1/2 a cup of tea – what we used to name “single Cha” in the cafes of Pune.
and people that can be put together in a Bollywoodish plot related to corruption, larceny, battle and ofpath, song and dance are HAFTA, the word for a bribe, probable as payment for concealing the purposeand suppressing the prosecution of members in a fracas or incident known as a LAPHDA. Or if it isintentionally complicated or made to vanish in a rounded fate it would be called GOL MAL. here endeth the etymological (ly questionable) lesson.
Indian-born British creator, playwright and screenwriter Farrukh Dhondy’s modern-day e-book is words: Mynon-public Babel (Harper Collins)
(besides for the headline, this story has now not been edited by NDTV staff and is posted from a syndicated feed.)
