Sea Of Poppies Part 34

burra/bara: 'I am convinced that this is another word that has entered English through a nautical route, burra/bara being the common Laskari term for the tallest of a ship's masts - the main.' See also dol.

Burrampooter (*The Glossary): 'This is merely the anglice, blessedly short-lived, of "Brahmaputra".'

bustee/basti: 'In my childhood we used this word only to mean "neighbourhood" or "settlement", with no pejorative implication attached. The English derivative, on the other hand, was used to mean "Black Town" or "native area", being applied only to the areas where Bengalis lived. Strange to think that it was in this derogatory guise that it was pa.s.sed back to Hind. and Bengali, and is now commonly used in the sense of "slum".'

butcha/bacha (*The Barney Book): 'A word for "child" that will undoubtedly migrate through the open windows of the nursery.' Neel was wrong about this.

buy-em-dear: See bayadre.

buzz: See shoke.

caftan/qaftan: See choga.

caksen/c.o.xen (*Roebuck): 'It is puzzling that Roebuck lists this as the Laskari word for "c.o.xswain", since the p.r.o.nunciation of it is indistinguishable from the English.'

caleefa/khalifa (*The Glossary): See bobbachy.

calico: 'Some dictionaries award this word a Malayali lineage, since this kind of cotton cloth was said to be a product of the Malabar coast. This is utter buckwash, for the word calico self-evidently comes from "Calicut", which is a place name introduced by Europeans: were the word derived from the town's Malayalam name the cloth would be known, surely, as "kozhikodo".'

calputtee (*Roebuck): 'The Laskari for "caulker", this was a mystery who found little employment on Indian vessels, which were generally rabbeted rather than caulked.'

carcanna/karcanna (*The Glossary): Already in Neel's lifetime this long-pedigreed English word (from Hind. karkhana,'work-place' or 'work-shop') was slowly yielding to the term 'factory' - a lexical scandal in Neel's ears, which were still accustomed to hearing that word used to designate the residence of a 'factor' or 'agent'. But it was not for nostalgic reasons alone that he mourned the pa.s.sing of carcanna/karcanna: he foresaw that its wreckage would also carry into oblivion many of those who had once worked in these places of manufacture - for example the factory-clerks known as carc.o.o.ns. It was in mourning the fate of this word that the unknown wordy-wallah penned his comments on logocide.

carc.o.o.n (*The Glossary and The Barney-Book): See above.

chabee (The Glossary): In an uncharacteristic display of restraint, Neel refused to enter into the controversy over whether the Portuguese word for 'key' had set sail for England from Portugal or Hind.

chabutra chab.u.t.ter: See bowly bowry.

chaprasi chupra.s.sy: See dufter daftar.

charpoy: As noted earlier (see bandar), Neel was of the opinion that words, unlike human beings, are less likely to survive the rigors of migration if they travel as couples: in any pair of synonyms one is sure to perish. How, then, was he to account for the journey of those eminently successful synonyms, charpoy and cot (both of which, un -beknownst to him, were to receive the Oracle's imprimatur)? Neel was clearly annoyed by this anomaly - ('Has Blatty no words for the comforts of the bed, that it must steal so wilfully from us?') - but he did not fail to recognize the threat that was posed to his pet theory by these paired words. 'English, no less than the languages of Hind., has many reasons to be grateful to the lascars, and the gift of the word cot (from Hind. khat) is not the least of them. There can be little doubt that this word entered the English language through a nautical route: it is my conviction that khat was the first Laskari word for "hammock" and that jhula/jhoola only came into use when the original was confiscated by their malums (vide the Admiral's definition of cot: "a wooden bed-frame, suspended from the beams of a ship for the officers, between decks"). These cots were clearly more comfortable than ordinary hammocks, for they were soon pa.s.sed down to ships' infirmaries, for the benefit of the sick and the wounded. This, by extension, is the sense in which the word was swept into the main current of the English language, being adopted first as a name for the swinging cribs of the nursery. We see thus that contrary to appearances, cot and charpoy are no more synonyms than are "cradle" and "bedstead". Nor indeed are they synonyms even in Hind., for I am convinced that charpai was originally applied to all four-legged pieces of furniture (in the precise sense of the Hind. charpai, "four-legged") in order to distinguish them from such objects as had only three legs (tin-pai or tipai - from which, as Sir Henry rightly observes, descended those small tables known as teapoys in English). The confusing term sea-poy, however, is merely a variant spelling of sepoy and has nothing whatsoever to do with legs or seasickness. The ghost of this peculiar misconception is yet to be laid, however, as is evident from a story I was recently told about a young lieutenant who came to be separated from his troops while boarding a ship. It is said that after crying out in alarm - "I've lost my seapoys!" - he was taken further aback at being handed a balty and some smelling salts.'

charter: 'Although the Oracle makes no mention of it, I am convinced that this verb was often used in the same sense as the Hind. verb chatna, from which English received the resplendent chutney, "good to lick" (not to be confused with chatty/chatta, which lascars were accustomed to apply to earthen vessels). The cant term charterhouse is frequently applied to houses of ill-repute.'

chatty/chatta (*the Admiral, Roebuck): See charter.

chawbuck/chabuk: 'This word, so much more expressive than "whip", was almost as much a weapon as the object it designated. That it should be among the few Hind. words that found a verbal use in English is scarcely a matter of surprise, considering how often it fell from the sahibs' lips. When so used, the proper form for the past participle is chawbuck't. The derived form chawbuckswar, "whip-rider", was considered a great compliment among hard-driving hors.e.m.e.n.'

chawbuckswar (The Glossary): See above.

cheese: Neel was no visionary in predicting the eventual incorporation of this derivative of Hind. chiz, 'thing', into the Oracle, for the use of it in such sentences as 'this cheroot is the real cheese' was common enough in his day. However, its role in such locutions as 'the Burra Cheese' would undoubtedly have come as a surprise.

chicken/chikan (*The Barney-Book): 'The closely-worked embroidery of Oudh; from which the cant expression "chicken-worked", frequently used to describe those who had perforce to live with a bawhawder ma'amsahib.'

chin-chin (*The Barney-Book): 'Greetings (from which chin-chin-joss: "worship").'

chin-chin-joss (*The Glossary): See chin-chin.

chingers (*The Barney-Book): 'Cu -rious that Barrre & Leland imagine this word to have entered the English language through the gypsy dialect. It was quite commonly used in bobachee-connahs, for choolas had always to be lit with chingers (from Hind. chingare). I have even heard it used in the sentence "The chingers flew".'

Chin-kalan (*The Glossary): 'Strange as it seems today, this was indeed the name by which lascars were accustomed to speak of the port of Canton.'

chints/chinti (*The Glossary, The Barney-Book): 'This word for ants and insects was doomed by its resemblance to the more common chintz (painted kozhikodoes)'.

chit/chitty: 'A most curious word, for despite the fact that it comes from the Hind. chitthi, 'letter,' it was never applied to any missive entrusted to the dawk. It had always to be delivered by hand, never by post, and preferably by a chupra.s.sy, never by a dawk-wallah or hurkaru.'

chitchky (The Glossary): Neel was convinced that this descendant of the Bengali word chhechki had a brilliant future as a migrant, predicting that it would even be enn.o.bled as a verb, since English had no equivalent term for this technique of cooking. Searching vainly for a palatable meal in the East End, he once wrote: 'Why do none of these lascars ever think of setting up inns and hostelries where they can serve chitckied cabbage with slivered whiting to Londoners? Would they not profit from the great gollmaul that would thus be created?' He would have been greatly saddened to see this elegant word replaced by the clumsy locution 'stir-fried'.

chittack: A measure of weight, equivalent to one ounce, seventeen penny-weights, twelve grains troy.

chobdar: 'To have one was a great sign of prestige, since a mace-bearer was a rare luxury. I still remember how the poor Raja of Mukhpora, even when facing ruin, could not bear to let his chobdar go.'

choga (see banyan): Neel was pessimistic about the future of this word, which he believed would be overwhelmed by its Turkish rival, caftan.

chokey choker choakee choky chowki: 'If an exchange of words betokens a joining of experience, then it would appear that prisons are the princ.i.p.al hinge between the people of Hind. and Blatty. For if the English gave us their "jail" in its now ubiquitous forms, jel, jel-khana, jel-bot and the like, we for our part have been by no means miserly in our own gifts. Thus as early as the sixteenth century the Hind. chowki was already on its way across the sea, eventually to effect its entry into English as those very old words chokey, choker, choky, and even sometimes chowki. The parent of these words is of course the Hind. chowk, which refers to a square or open place in the centre of a village or town: this was where cells and other places of confinement were customarily located, being presided over by a kotwal and policed by a paltan of darogas and chowkidars. But chokey appears to have gained in grimness as it traveled, for its Hind. avatar is not the equal of its English equivalent in the conjuring of dread: a function that devolves rather to qaid and qaidi - two words which started their travels at almost the same time as chokey, and went on to gain admittance under such guises as quod, quoddie, and quodded, the last having the sense of "jailed".'

chokra/chuckeroo: 'Another instance in which Hind. and English usages subtly diverge, for a chhokra in former refers to a youth, a lad, a stripling, while chokra/chuckeroo points rather to a rung in the ladder of employment, which, no matter whether in a household, a military encampment, or a ship's crew, was usually the lowest, and thus commonly (but by no means always) held by the young. In the Raskhali Rajbari it would have been considered strange indeed to speak of a middle-aged khidmatgar as a chhokra. But such an usage would not appear unusual in English. It is interesting in this regard to compare chokra/chuckeroo with its synonyms launder/launda, which were never used in mixed company, for reason perhaps, of baring a little too much of their manhood.' See also lascar.

choola/chula: 'Another of those words in which the experience of migration has wrought a subtle shift of personality. In sahiby bobachee connahs the word usually referred to an oven, whereas in Hind. it was used for a stove with an open fire (from which, the Laskari chuldan for "galley"). Often these stoves were portable, the combustibles being loaded into a clay or metal balde. It is this perhaps that has misled some pundits into thinking that the Laskari dish, "galinha balde," or "balti chicken", was named after a certain kind of stove. One does not need to have observed the preparation of this dish to know that this is pure buckwash, for if it were indeed thus named, then surely its name would have been "choola chicken".'

choomer (*The Barney-Book): 'In English the use of the Hind. loan word for "kiss", chumma, was used always in the sense of "peck on the cheek", and was never applied to deeper amatory explorations. The misleading term "kiss-miss" does not refer to the mystery of the choomer. As many a furtive cla.s.sy has discovered, the whispering of this word in the city's disreputable gullies will lead not to a charterhouse, but to a handful of raisins.'

chop: 'Another word of Hind. origin (from chhp, "stamp" or "seal") that has pa.s.sed fluently from the English argot of India into the patois of southern China. It is not, however, related to +chop-chop, "quick, quickly", which is of Cantonese derivation (from k'wai-k'wai); it is this latter form that yields the ugly vulgarism chopstick, none of the blame for which can be pinned on Hind.'

chop-chop: See above.

chopstick: See above.