It's All Geek to Me!

October 23, 2007

Vishy's Indian English Dictionary: (hair) slide

slide./slyd/ or /slAYd/. A hairpin. Probably named for how it is worn by ladies: sticking the open end into your hair and then sliding it into place. As I grew up in Mumbai, I also heard it being pronounced as slAYd (rhymes with 'glade').

(Note: Bobby Jindal of Louisiana is making headlines because he was elected as the first non-white governor of the state in about 130 years. I read in his wikipedia bio that he helped his wife deliver their son by himself and named him Slade. That's what got me writing this blog entry.)

Posted by Vishy at 10:22 AM | Comments (0)

August 07, 2007

The Culture Code: an Indian take

I've been reading The Culture Code by Franco-American international marketer Clotaire Rapaille. It reveals a series of so-called Culture Codes, which are high level cultural archetypes embedded in the larger cultural consciousness of a nation. The good Monsieur doth not pontificate much--it's a pretty thin volume that basically sets out only how Rapaille uncovered the Codes for shopping, health, food, sex and a whole bunch of other things using his patented method. An archetypal Code is a single concept OWNED by a subject area in a cultural context. If that's too abstract for you, an example is "The Code for alcohol in American Culture is GUN." He sold these insights to Fortune 500 corporations around the world for a whole bunch of money, and they in turn made a whole bunch of money positioning products in peculiar ways in America and Europe.

The book is as haughty in making astonishingly sweeping statements about various American and European cultures as it is humble in explaining how the consequences that flowed from these Codes successfully persuaded people around the world to buy various products. Every chapter follows a comforting, if repetitive, parallel structure. First, Rapaille sets the stage for the Code at hand by stating some commonly held truisms that relate to the subject being explored. For instance, at the start of the section exploring the American code for Home, he says "When we gather for Thanksgiving Dinner, we reconnect with our homes and affirm the importance that home has in our lives". He hints at a hypothetical archetype after stating a few more of these bits of conventional wisdom. Then he lists supposedly verbatim accounts of people he has interviewed on the subject (in this case, of home). His Patented Method™ essentially consists of a focus-group-meets-shrink-session-meets-pajama-party, where subjects spend three hours (including one lying down on pillows) telling him about their first memories of home. He cherry picks pieces of these interviews, develops them a little bit and makes an astonishing jump to uncover the archetypal Code IN CAPITAL LETTERS.

The logical leaps Rapaille makes when unveiling the code can seem a bit, uh, lofty but he usually manages to redeem himself by explaining the consequences that flow from the Code. He rounds out the explanation by mentioning examples of advertising campaigns which were successful by 'staying on Code', or adhering to the archetype. In passing, he also mentions counterexamples--advertising campaigns that failed because they went 'off Code'. His method is altogether fascinating, even if I don't always agree with everything that flows from a Code. I won't give away too much; the book is an engaging read and I don't want to spoil it for you. The money sentence in the book, however, has to be "Ronald Reagan was much more reptilian than either Jimmy Carter or Walter Mondale." I burst out laughing when I read this sentence. Attempting to explain it though will spoil the hilarity, so I am not going to attempt it here.

Needless to say, the good Monsieur does not even go near uncovering Culture Codes for the emerging markets of the world: Brazil, Russia, India and China, which will drive the future of worldwide commerce in the decades to come. I am going to try to make my own hypotheses for Indian Culture Codes, although there is no way I can test them out by hosting three hour patented pajama parties for my fellow countrymen. I've said here before that I think Indian and American cultures aren't all that different; I'd hazard a guess that it's because the Codes for many things in Indian and American cultures are the same. 

The Code for India in Indian Culture is RESILIENCE AND REBIRTH. Indian children are raised with the message that Indian culture is the most valuable thing they are going to inherit. One of the most heavily emphasized attributes of this culture is its timelessness. India was the choice target of multiple waves of invaders from Central Asia and they left unimaginable trails of death and destruction in their wake. Every major invasion undoubtedly changed India but India's resilience helped in its rebirth after each one of them. This theme comes out in Jawaharlal Nehru's first speech to Independent India on Aug 15, 1947. He said

"Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom...We end today a period of ill fortune and India discovers herself again."

which really captures it best. So, any products that emphasize resilience, (cyclical) timelessness and rebirth do really well in the Indian market. Remember the multi-generational commercial for Woodward's Gripe Water? It's an old commercial but one of my most vivid and lingering memories of advertising. If you want Indian Cultural Codes for other things, maybe large sums of money will induce me to share them with you ;) They sure made it easier for M.Rapaille. Jus' sayin'.

Posted by Vishy at 10:44 PM | Comments (0)

April 05, 2007

A combinatorial approach to Indian cooking (Part 1 of 2)

I once heard Rachael Ray say on her cooking show that when ladies from the Southern United States exchange recipes with others, they often hold back one ingredient so that the recipient of the recipe will be unable to replicate it. I don't know whether this is true or false, but if that's how it really is, then it's pretty sad. Cooking is one of my favorite ways to destress and it would be a pity if I didn't spread the joy by sharing my methods (or open sourcing them, if you will). My girlfriend praises my cooking a lot, but I use a pretty ordinary, almost algorithmic approach to cooking, which I'll outline below. Think of the below as a  master blueprint to almost all of my Indian cooking.

Note that I am a vegetarian, so I'm only going to concern myself with Indian vegetarian cooking. India has had an awesome vegetarian tradition mostly because of the sheer variety of ingredients available there; vegetables, gourds, legumes and lentils abound in even corner grocery stores. Here are the food groups I pick from when concocting a meal (so as not to break up the text too much, I've linked to Wikipedia definitions of Indian food terms when I can):

I. Starchy/bulky foods: Potatoes, pumpkin, soy chunks, tofu and paneer all fall under this category. I think of these foods as central ingredients in a meal because they add carbs and bulk to the meal. Starchy/bulky foods are well and good but they are pretty insipid (except perhaps for paneer), which is where I bring in...
II. Foods for taste and color: Any other vegetables that have color, a distinctive taste or both. Peppers, mushrooms, peas, okra and eggplant would definitely fall under this category. Not all vegetables in American supermarkets are available in India, so I'd stick to the ones above to start with and experiment with others when I'm more confident. No matter what combination of vegetables you use though, your Indian vegetarian meal will be utterly incomplete without...
III. Spices: Indian meals may seem almost overwhelming in flavor, but you'd be surprised how much of the flavor can come from one or two spice mixes that you can buy at an Indian grocery store. If you want to use the same spices many kitchens in India use, look for spice mixes made by companies like Everest or MDH. Safe bets are garam masala, pav bhaji masala, chhole masala, shahi paneer masala and dal masala. I don't shy away from fish masala, chicken masala and other meat masalas; contrary to what their name might indicate, they are usually vegetarian. They're similar in makeup to garam masala but emphasize different spices.  Today I use spice mixes along with individual spices such as cinnamon, nutmeg, cumin and cilantro; sticking with spice mixes alone is a good idea to start with though. Spices and two veggies will get you pretty far, and maybe even all the way, but occasionally you want to add in a special touch...
IV. Sauces (optional):  Sauces don't always have to be creamy like the stuff you get in Indian restaurants in the U.S. (in fact, I much prefer it if they are not). They can be tomatoey, creamy, floury or pasty. The question of whether or not to add a sauce to a dish is hard to answer because it depends the specific ingredients in the dish as well as what it's going to be eaten with (rice or rotis). It took me a few tries to figure it out, but a good rule of thumb is to have a sauce if you're gonna eat the dish with rice. As an aside, I should mention that saucy dishes are called 'wet'/'gravy' (Hin. geela), while dishes without sauces are called 'dry' (Hin. sookha). You'll see this distinction in translation on some menus in the U.S. as well, especially ones with Indian Chinese cuisine.

I've only mentioned sauces in passing here, but not actually gone into how to make them. Trust me that this apparent oversight is not intentional. The next post will outline methods to put a meal together using ingredients chosen from the four food groups above. It'll also contain instructions on how to make some standard sauces from scratch.

Posted by Vishy at 08:07 PM | Comments (0)

February 15, 2007

Vishy's Indian English Dictionary: banian

banian./buni·YAHN/. An article of clothing worn underneath a man's shirt on just the top half of his body. Known as a wifebeater (or spousal abuser, if you prefer) in the United States. Origin unclear, but you'll find tons of Indian billboards that proudly advertise men's underwear with this word on them. I've always been really curious that I never saw this word even once outside India. Not to be confused with banYan, which is the kind of tree under which the Buddha attained enlightenment.

Posted by Vishy at 12:25 AM | Comments (1)

January 23, 2007

Vishy's Indian English Dictionary: whomsoever

whomsoever. /HOOM·so·evuh/. Not originally an Indian English word, it is nonetheless a vestige of the British bureaucrat-raj of yore in present-day India's babucracy. This word is used to begin formal correspondence where the addressee is unknown, as in "To Whomsoever It May Concern". The U.S. equivalent, as you may have guessed, is "To Whom It May Concern" (I don't know if it's just me, but 'whomsoever' sounds a lot more... dismissive than 'whom').

The word occurs in the Bible (King James Version), in the gospel of Matthew as "Whomsoever I shall kiss, that same is he". But even the contemporary English Standard version of the Bible has moved on, choosing to use "The one" in place of "whomsoever". If you google for whomsoever, most of the hits are sources linked somehow to India. It's safe to say then that 'whomsoever' is now Indian English.

Posted by Vishy at 03:03 PM | Comments (0)

November 26, 2006

Three things South Indian cinema can teach Bollywood

Indian cinema is a lot more diverse than audiences outside India might give it credit for. The Indian movies many outsiders have heard of are primarily Hindi language movies (yeah, those supposedly 'musical' ones). Although the industry that produces these movies is based in Bombay (the B in Bollywood), that city's major spoken language is not Hindi. There are several smaller film industries based in cities all over India that make movies in other languages.

The biggest film industries outside Bollywood are in South India, where Telugu, Tamil, Kannada and Malayalam are spoken. Movies in the first two languages have a much broader base and appeal than movies in the latter two languages. Nevertheless, there is significant cross-pollination of ideas, actors and movie directors among movies in the South Indian languages, which leads to a reasonable degree of thematic overlap.

Bollywood movies, as popular as they are, tend to be centered around only a handful of sociocultural themes (I'll note though that since the release of Dil Chahta Hai in 2001, a greater number of Bollywood movies have tried to introduce new and provocative themes). Add a few predictable elements and you have a formula that satisfies the world's single largest film market. Many aspects of this formula have been emulated in Indian regional cinema to varying levels of success; indeed, regional actors generally gain in respect if they can also pull off a successful Bollywood movie. South Indian language movies come nowhere close to Bollywood movies in the size of their audience or box office collections. Still, they have their own take on some aspects of moviemaking, which I wish more Bollywood movies would use to reinvent themselves.

• Irony and humor. Blockbuster Hindi movies these days are generally short on irony or anything more than token attempts at humor. Perhaps the director fears that these elements are but peripheral to the main plot of the movie, or worse, that they might undermine his message. Humor and irony might undermine the message of the movie only if it involves the major characters. South Indian movies, especially those in Tamil, manage to present enough humor and irony without detracting from the main message of the movie. They use characters that have nothing whatsoever to do with the main plot of the movie; they exist solely to provide comic relief and temporary distractions from the movie's plot development. Indeed, actors like Senthil and Goundamani have made entire careers playing such roles. Free of any involvement with the plot, their minor roles often succeed in delivering insightful social commentary while being funny. What's in it for the audience? A temporary respite from a concentrated shot of plot development, a few laughs and a chance to relate as human beings to the events on the screen. Contrast this random, and quite frankly bizarre, approach to humor with that of most Bollywood blockbusters (Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna comes to mind), where any comic relief is provided by major or supporting characters and is constrained somewhat by plot elements. Not all movies must have irony or humor to be successful; however, those irony-free movies that deal solely with plot and character issues without commenting on wider social issues take themselves too seriously in enforcing patriarchy, social hierarchy and notions of propriety. Conveniently enough, this brings me to my second point.
• Treatment of human and social issues. Indian cinema has always had somewhat of an escapist streak; it caters to audiences that want to rise above the concerns that constrain them ethically, morally or materially. Starting in the 90s, several movies (especially song sequences) have been shot outside India just to give a taste of foreign lands to the local audience. Influential actors like Shahrukh Khan and Saif Ali Khan have starred in movies that depict unbelievably well-dressed characters living opulent lifestyles inaccessible to the vast majority of the Indian population. Although this escapism provides some distractions from ordinary life in India, which can often be difficult, before long it becomes hard to identify with the troubles of the characters or to see their situation as relevant in any way to the viewer's own condition. South Indian cinema is much more likely to feature relevant human and social issues (the emotional complications of surrogate motherhood, the mysteries of multiple personality disorders, the slow deterioration of someone affected by a terminal disease) in its themes. Most of these movies, notably those from the Malayalam film industry, don't do well at the box office because they are not sufficiently escapist. They receive plenty of critical acclaim as serious cinema because they expand the repertoire of collectivist and widely relevant issues that can be depicted on screen. Contrast this to Bollywood's much narrower idea of pushing the envelope: questioning whether premarital cohabitation or extramarital affairs may be appropriate in some circumstances.
• Musical inventiveness. South Indian cinema has seen immensely talented musical directors like A. R. Rahman or Ilayaraja, who have been highly receptive to experimenting with new styles of musical composition. Ilayaraja had a good bit of training in Western classical music, which he used to great effect in his work. A. R. Rahman's inventive genius has earned him a commission for the musical version of the Lord of the Rings. South Indian music directors are also more likely to give new singers a break, judging from all the fresh talent that keeps getting featured in South Indian movies. In fact, singers like Sadhana Sargam have fared much better singing in South Indian movies even though they aren't native to South India. Bollywood music has historically been largely predictable and features standard-issue love songs and dance beats that have been perennial favorites.

Bollywood is an incredibly successful commercial machine without a doubt. Despite the sheer number of movies it produces though, it is still a major event if an Indian movie is a serious contender for international honors in film. More than anything else, this points to a lack of diversity, arising in turn from a lack of maturity. I have no delusions about movies being high art; moneymaking continues to be their primary goal in every major film industry in the world. Still, if Bollywood could occasionally deviate from tried and tested themes and learn a thing or two from the South Indian movie industry, it will surely result in greater variety and wider appeal.

Posted by Vishy at 03:59 PM | Comments (0)

November 23, 2006

Hindu vs. Hindi: a PSA

This is a public service announcement regarding some basic terminology about India's major language and religion.

The word Hindi refers to India's most widely spoken language. Not everyone in India speaks it, but it is the language spoken or understood by the largest percentage of India's population. As with so many things India, the analogy of India to all of Europe comes in handy. Consider how you may be able to get around many places in Europe — especially the touristy places — with basic English (okay, let's ignore for a moment the disdainful looks you might get). It is quite likely that you'll come to a region within a country where English is completely unknown and English speakers may number only in the single digits. Still, it wouldn't be a stretch to say that English is the language that larger percentage of Europe's population understands than any other, including as a second or third language. The situation is similar in India with Hindi.

The word Hindu refers to someone who follows India's largest religion, Hinduism. Although India has the world's largest population of Hindus, they also live in several parts of the world where there is a significant Indian diaspora, such as the Caribbean, Mauritius, Fiji, the U.S., Canada and the U.K. Hindus don't have to be Indian by ethnicity; indeed there are many Caucasian followers of Hinduism in the U.S. A related word, Hindoo, was used in the Western world historically to refer to people of Indian descent, but is now obsolete, if not offensive.

Hindus may speak Hindi but they don't have to. Likewise, not everyone who speaks Hindi is Hindu — they could be Muslim, Sikh, Christian or even Jewish (all these religious groups exist in India or places with Indian diaspora to varying degrees)! But above all remember -- Hindi is a language and Hindu is a person.

I frequently see people (U.S.-ian or otherwise) mistaking Hindu for Hindi or vice versa and thought I'd do my bit to clear the matter up. In fact, I've even made a T-shirt about it, along with a few other India-themed T-shirts. Buy them for yourself or your friends and spread the word!

Posted by Vishy at 12:18 PM | Comments (0)

November 06, 2006

Vishy's Indian English Dictionary: godman

godman./GOD·man/. A man of religion. Usually someone who commands a lot of influence acting as spiritual leader to the world at large, and not just in an intimate, personal sense. Many godmen are major media personalities in India today, appearing in the morning programming of spiritual TV channnels. By and large they tend to give sage advice, which need not always be of the spiritual sort -- things like 'learn to laugh freely' and 'don't let jealousy and possessiveness get the better of you'. Like with most other fields of endeavor, however, this one isn't without its rotten apples.

Godmen have been implicated in a number of sexual abuse cases and other forms of dodgy behavior. Given the deep influence religion holds in Indian society, some of these indictments have been handed down for political reasons as well.

To be deemed a godman, a footing in some religious tradition is generally required, especially if dispensing some form of religious commmunion. Other influential 'lifestyle consultants', who hand out spiritual advice relating to Feng Shui and Vastu are generally not considered to fall under this classification. Oh, and in case you were wondering, this guy would appear to qualify, though I am really not too thrilled about it.

Posted by Vishy at 11:34 PM | Comments (0)

October 12, 2006

Vishy's Indian English Dictionary: fourth seat

[The following piece of writing predates this blog. Like this other piece, it's adapted from something I had originally written for the addictive marvel of chaos that is Everything2.com.]

fourth seat./forthseet/. (chiefly Mumbai) The fourth person to sit on a seat built to seat three people. This term is used to refer to the unlucky person who gets to seat half their ass when traveling on a local train, Mumbai's term for its commuter railway. It is the commuting equivalent of a third wheel.

Mumbai's local trains serve areas that lie as far as 60 km away from the city center. They are filled woefully beyond capacity, even during non-rush hours. The sheer number of commuters on these local trains at all hours means that you can pretty much count on not having a seat when you travel. When you do get a chance to sit, you frequently end up as the fourth seat.

The fourth seat is an ignominious position indeed. You have to constantly push the seated half of your ass against the three others that rightfully belong on that seat and feel bad for doing so. At the same time, a nagging doubt gnaws on the corner of your soul as you wonder if you're really better off for putting in all this effort.

Homophobes make for worse fourth seats, because Mumbai's local trains have sex-segregated carriages. Then again, personal space is not nearly as big an issue in India as it is in the United States or elsewhere in the West.

[A much more detailed account—thanks, Tapan!—is available, complete with descriptions of the resulting circulatory impairment and other phenomena unique to Mumbai's local trains.]

Posted by Vishy at 10:51 PM | Comments (1)

October 11, 2006

Vishy's Indian English Dictionary: communal

communal./kuhm·YOO·nuhl/. Of, or relating to one's affiliation with a community, particularly a religious one. In American English, the same word is used in the sense of common property—'communal cookware' in a college dorm—or in the sense of relating to a commune. In Indian English though, it is rooted in community and has historically been used to describe relationships among the many religions that make up India. Although there is nothing inherent in the word that makes it most appropriate for religious affiliations, it is rarely applied to other kinds of affiliations in Indian society, such as caste. In recent memory, communal riots in India occurred between Hindus and Muslims in 2002, at Godhra in Gujarat. The Indian English sense of communal also occurs in the Singaporean cultural matrix.

Posted by Vishy at 09:56 PM | Comments (0)

October 09, 2006

Vishy's Indian English Dictionary: gazetted officer

gazetted officer. /guh·ZET·ed·offi·suh/. Any civil servant, whose name, appointments and career movements are published in a periodic government-issued publication called a gazette. A gazetted officer performs functions similar to those performed by a notary public in the U.S., such as notarizing copies and verifying the authenticity of translations. Becoming a gazetted officer makes a bureaucrat a member of a fairly elite group—according to one source, the government's intent is to have one gazetted officer for every ten non-gazetted officers. Becoming a gazetted officer is a certain sign of having arrived amid India's teeming bureaucracy and an automatic disqualification from making statements like 'stick it to The Man'.

Posted by Vishy at 10:31 PM | Comments (0)

October 07, 2006

The Indian vegetarian's rant

Like several of my fellow countrymen, I don't eat meat. I don't make a big deal out of it, but I get questions about it all the time.

Most of the time these questions are sincere -- the asker is just plain curious. Sometimes though, they are just a thinly veiled way of expressing contempt at the 'philosophy' of vegetarianism (can anybody tell me what that is? I didn't get the memo) and on some days, this bugs me. Giving the asker the benefit of doubt, I always answer them as I would a sincere question.

For a while now, I've meant to write up something that addresses all the questions I get, sincere or otherwise. I get so many different lines of questioning that I am going to present them all here as one conversation. For the purpose of this post, I'll invent a fictitious person with whom I am having this fictitious conversation. Let's call him, oh I don't know, Cosmo, taking inspiration from Kramer's annoying, no-holds-barred way of asking questions in Seinfeld. If he seems to lacking in, um, social graces and general awareness, it is intentional—he is the figment of my imagination conjured up precisely to ask me all these questions about vegetarianism, including the annoying ones.

[Cosmo is a friend of a friend. We've just had a long night of club hopping. I am sitting with him and a group of friends in a diner, looking over our menus.]

Cosmo: Hey, let's get some buffalo wings and calamari for appetizers.
Me: Can we get mozzarella sticks too?
Cosmo: What's the matter man? What's wrong with the ones I picked?
Me: Oh, I am vegetarian.
Cosmo (resisting the urge to roll his eyes): Oh! I didn't know. How about we get some fish and chips?
Me: I don't eat meat or fish.
Cosmo: Wai-duh-min-nit. Don't some vegetarians eat fish?
Me: There are some that call themselves pesceterians, but they are not really vegetarians. Vegetarianism is a more restrictive diet.
Cosmo: All right, all right. I guess we can get mozzarella sticks instead of the calamari.
Me: Great, thanks!

[We order the appetizers.]

C (suspiciously): So. You're vegetarian huh?
M: That's right.
C: What does your family think of your decision?
M: Well, everybody in my family is vegetarian, so I guess they must be supportive.
C: Wow, so is that for religious reasons?
M: Well, I was raised vegetarian for religious and cultural reasons...
C: All Hindi people are vegetarian?
M: You must mean Hindu people. Hindi is a language—in fact, India's most common language. So yes, I was raised in a Hindu family. Even though I am not that religious anymore, I never really found a reason to start eating meat. It has become a part of how I live.
C: Have you tried meat?
M: Not really, no. I have eaten it one or two times by mistake and when I found out later, I didn't really care for it that much anyway.
C: Dude, that's really too bad. You're really missin' out on a lot of good stuff.
M: Maybe, but it doesn't bother me. Let's see... are you straight, gay or bi?
C (indignant): What the hell man! I am totally straight. I don't need any of that gay stuff in my life.
M: Well, if you're not bi, does it bother you that you're missing out on half of all the sex you could be having?
C: All right, all right. Point taken. But how can you skip eating meat after its delicious smell hits you?
M: Some meat does smell good to me, but most of it doesn't smell too pleasant.

[The wings and mozzarella sticks arrive. The waiter is taking entrée orders.]

Me (to the waiter): I'll have a mushroom-spinach omelette with muenster cheese. Can you get me a strawberry milkshake as well? Thanks!
C: Wait a second. I thought you were vegetarian. And you just got a cheese omelette and a milkshake?
M: I am vegetarian, not vegan. Vegans eat no animal products whatsoever—it's they who skip dairy and eggs. Suffice it to say, they have a slightly harder time at diners like this.
C: Oh, cool. So you're actually somewhat normal. But doesn't it bother you man that we're eating wings?
M: No, of course not. Why would it?
C: I don't know man. You said you don't like the smell.
M: Oh, don't worry about it. I have no problems if someone else at the table is eating meat. Most of my friends are actually not vegetarian.
C: But surely it must bother you that we're eating these poor delicious chickens?!
M: Not really, no—that's your choice. Like I said, I was raised vegetarian. I never decided to 'go vegetarian' when I was 12, to save the animals, so I tend not to be ideological about it. Just like you are not forcing me to eat yours wings right now, I would never require you to be vegetarian.
C: Okay, to each his own I suppose. But you must surely run into all these health problems?
M: I've had absolutely no health problems because of my diet.
C: But you can't get all the nutrients your body needs by being vegetarian! Where do you get your protein?
M: Actually, studies show plant foods alone can supply all the essential amino acids the body needs. What's more, as you just saw, I eat eggs and dairy. I get all the protein I need from all these sources.
C: Dunno how you keep it up. Hey Elaine, weren't you vegetarian too at some point?
Elaine: Oh yeah, for a summer, when I was 15. I was the only one in my family who decided to stop eating meat. I started eating a lot of junk food and actually put on some weight. Then one night soon after Labor Day, my mom made this amazing meatloaf. The smell filled the house and drove me mad. That's when I realized being vegetarian was not for me. I ate meatloaf that night as if nothing had happened before and then never looked back. It's a distant dream now.
C (with self-satisfied grin on his face): See? Told you so.
M: If you keep telling yourself you're missing out by being vegetarian, it's not very surprising that you can't keep it up.

[Cosmo's Philly cheesesteak sandwich arrives.]

C: Mmmm... you sure man that you don't want a bite?
M: Thanks but no thanks. I don't eat beef or any other meat.
C (mouth full of beef, bread and cheese): Yeah, but this cow didn't eat any meat either! Heh heh, heh heh heh... just kidding.
...
C: So let me ask you this, do you eat shrimp?
M: No, I don't eat seafood either. One rule of thumb is, if it has a face I won't eat it.
C: Aha! Then what about oysters? They don't have a face. They probably don't feel any pain when you cook them either.
M: But I think they stink to high heaven. The if-it-has-a-face rule is only a rule of thumb. It's not like you eat all animals either. In the end, I decide if I want to eat something or not.
C: Have you tried caviar? It's not exactly an animal.
M: I haven't tried caviar mostly because I haven't wanted to try it badly enough. It does involve cutting open 'pregnant' fish, so it is not generally considered vegetarian. I dunno, perhaps it might be interesting to try someday, with some good champagne.
C: Wait a minute—I thought vegetarians don't drink? I had a friend from Pakistan who didn't drink.
M: Your friend probably didn't drink 'cause he was Muslim. Also, if he was from Pakistan, I doubt he was vegetarian.
C: Are all Indians vegetarian?
M: Hardly! In fact, most Indian households are not vegetarian. There is a subtle guilt complex that some Indians have about eating meat, but if that were a big problem then most of India would be vegetarian.

[It's time to pay the bill and leave.]

M: Hey, here's $12 if we split the bill evenly among the six of us.
C: It's okay man. Your food cost only $6. Just put in $8 so it includes tax and tip.
M: Thanks man. See? Here's one mixed blessing about being vegetarian. Your food costs less but if you just split the bill evenly, you end up overpaying.
C: It's the tax you pay for being weird.
M: Hey, 6-10% of Americans say they are vegetarian, which is about the same percentage of college-educated Americans who couldn't find the U.S. on a world map. Have a good night!

Posted by Vishy at 05:46 PM | Comments (1)

September 28, 2006

Vishy's Indian English Dictionary: rakhee sister

rakhee sister./rah·KHEE sis·tuh/. Not a blood sibling but one in spirit. A rakhee is a wristband that a woman ties on any man she considers her brother, in exchange for his protection (on a day called Raksha Bandhan, lit. bond of protection). After the rakhee is tied, the pair are bound as spiritual siblings who will look out for each other. It is fairly common to see men walking around on Raksha Bandhan day with their forearms covered in rakhees. Blood siblings also engage in this custom, but just as many rakhee brother-sister pairs, if not more, are unrelated by blood.

Needless to say, the ability to designate anybody as your sibling can easily be subverted—not all rakhees need be mutually consensual. Tying a rakhee on somebody's wrist is entirely the woman's prerogative, and a way to brush off unwelcome advances from a man. Sometimes, snubs can happen inadvertently. Suppose you're a man in American society and you're really attracted to a girl until she says to you one day, "I can tell you anything. You're like a brother to me." That's exactly how an Indian guy can feel if a girl surprises him with a rakhee. Of course, in both the American and Indian versions of the situation, the guy is supposed to react in the same way, with a smile that hides more than it shows, because he has just become a rakhee brother.

Posted by Vishy at 11:16 PM | Comments (0)

September 27, 2006

Vishy's Indian English Dictionary: kitty party

kitty party./ki·tee·PAH·tee/. A party where guests contribute money to a common pool, which is all given away to the guest who wins a drawing that happens at the party. Usually held on lazy afternoons and attended by Indian housewives, almost necessarily embellished with the attendant socializing and gossiping opportunities.

In fact, as I was growing up, I always thought of gossip as the primary function of these get-togethers. Stardust magazine at the time had a celebrity gossip column called "Nita's Natter", with a sultry cigarette-smoking cat as its icon. When kitty party mingled with this image in my head, I would imagine a coterie of Indian housewives transformed into gossiping cats at these social events. Sadly, as I later found out, the word kitty in this phrase has nothing to do with cats. It is more closely related to the table's prize in a game of poker, also called kitty by some (Why? The explanations don't seem entirely convincing to me.).

So now you know of one way Desperate Housewives in India amuse themselves.

Posted by Vishy at 10:17 PM | Comments (1)

August 08, 2006

Vishy's Indian English Dictionary: pass out

pass out. /PAHS·owt/. To graduate successfully from somewhere, especially an educational institution. For example, "I am studying B.Tech Mechanical Engineering at REC Trichy, passing out this year." Although final-year performance usually counts for the most in one's final university grade in India, the sentence above does not refer to any bouts of unconsciousness brought on as a result of the stress. It merely indicates that the speaker is the Indian equivalent of a U.S. college senior.

Passing out usually means moving on to better things. So, I suppose it would be germane to mention in this post that I too just passed out, finally. After years of weighing the question in my mind, I realized that the time is right and I can't hold myself back any longer. I have made the switch.

So, hello blogworld from a gorgeous, sleek black MacBook!

Posted by Vishy at 09:31 PM | Comments (0)

July 31, 2006

Blogging the Mahabharata: Introduction

"It contains all that is worth knowing; what is not in it is not worth knowing." So the ancient Indian sage Vaishampayan is reported to have said of the Mahabharata, widely acknowledged to be the longest epic in the world. It is arguably the most important text in the ancient Indian canon and contains, among other things, the Bhagavadgita, which, apart from being Hinduism's Bible-equivalent according to some, also packs a powerful philosophical wallop. The elaborate rituals of Hindu life may be ascribed to the Vedas, but the complex episodes and heroic personas that animate the Indian mythos live out their lives in the Mahabharata. Hardly any child in India--Hindu or otherwise--has grown up without hearing of this epic that captures the imaginations of billions, including me.

The Mahabharata (literally, "the great story of Bharat's line") has been the subject of a staggering amount of social, political and spiritual commentary in India. When compared with the Bible, it tends to omit details. Commandments, burnt offerings and uncleanness resulting from menstruation are not featured in its pages. Save for some explicit moralizing in the Bhagavadgita parts, the Mahabharata mostly features powerful characters whose choices and actions are nuanced and of ambiguous "goodness" and moral worth. The overriding message is one of realpolitik: dharma, or righteousness, must be upheld at all costs, even if it means betraying your clan, your relatives or even your own self. This sort of end-justifies-the-means outlook is deeply entrenched in the Indian collective psyche even today.

I was told the story of the Mahabharata several times in my childhood. Yet, not once have I viewed it as anything more than a story with occasional religious or prescriptive overtones. I've acquired most of my current critical reasoning skills in a secular, humanistic setting, after I left the milieu of my relatively religious family and community. Earlier, I viewed the Mahabharata as a simple clash between good and evil and as such, was uncritical of the established wisdom about its main characters. In recent times though, I've come to realize that as with any great epic, shades of gray that don't immediately meet the eye inhabit the Mahabharata as well.

Therefore, taking inspiration from David Plotz's Blogging the Bible project, I have decided to read the Mahabharata and blog about it. For starters, it would be a series of related posts -- hopefully one that would keep my readers coming back. It would make me read the Mahabharata in a renewed secular and humanistic light, divorced from its usual moralistic undertones. I hope to examine how some events of the Mahabharata continue to influence attitudes in India to this day. My writing will be less entertaining than Plotz's; I have much less to material to deride in the Mahabharata, because of its predilection towards skipping details that may seem absurd in modern life. For my reexamination, I will use this online full-text edition of the Mahabharata, if you want to read ahead. I hope that through this critical reexamination, I will end up loving a much-loved epic even more.

Watch this space.

Posted by Vishy at 11:24 PM | Comments (5)

July 12, 2006

Vishy's Indian English Dictionary: doubt

doubt. /DOWT/. A question asking for clarification. In standard English and American, the noun doubt is uncountable and refers to a lack of complete trust in something. Doubt may be expressed as simply as doubting someone's abilities or as profoundly as someone doubting their own religious faith. Not so in India. In India, doubt can be used as a countable noun. When a school teacher goes over an intricate concept in class, she invariably leaves some students with doubts in their mind about their understanding of the material just covered. Students ask her questions to get a better understanding of the concept and each such question is called a doubt. It is entirely normal to hear a statement like "I have just one doubt, miss" or "If you have any doubts before the exam tomorrow, come see me in the staff room". The doubts in the aforementioned sentences are not as much rooted in a lack of faith as in a lack of understanding. Attentive readers would have encountered the Indian English sense of doubt a fair bit on online message boards in threads started by Indians. Titles such as "Visual Basic .NET/Oracle doubt" are not uncommon for threads on programming-related message boards. It is my understanding that this sense is mostly prevalent in southern India, but I could be wrong on this count.

Posted by Vishy at 09:05 PM | Comments (0)

July 05, 2006

Vishy's Indian English Dictionary: flyover

flyover. /FLAI·ovuh/. Not the opposite of this other word. Not an epithet for the states of the United States that lack a coastline either. A flyover is what passes as an overpass (whoops) in U.S. English. Flyovers have been mushrooming in Mumbai and other major cities of India as a solution to traffic congestion that occasionally approaches legendary levels. In their wake they've been creating several opportunities for real estate development, both inside and outside apartments. I'd much rather live under a flyover than an overpass—it sounds liberating, airy and open unlike its infelicitous U.S. counterpart, a happy Jewish festival in reverse. Having said that, I am equally glad about the existence of overpass—imagine what New York's lovely DUMBF would be called otherwise!

Posted by Vishy at 09:15 PM | Comments (0)

July 04, 2006

Vishy's Indian English Dictionary: co-brother

co-brother. /KOH·bru·thuhr/. How two men are related if they are married to sisters. There is no corresponding kinsip term in Anglo-American English, which prefers to cop out with the term brother-in-law, as best as I can tell. To see why brother-in-law doesn't quite work, consider this (admittedly wildly unlikely) scenario: if Patty Bouvier, Marge Simpson's sister in The Simpsons had a husband, then Homer Simpson and he would be co-brothers according to Indian English. Homer would be Patty's brother-in-law by blood because he is married to her sister by blood. However, in American English, Homer would be brother-in-law to both Patty and her husband, by blood to one and by marriage to another. A separate co-brother kinship term frees up brother-in-law to connote a by-blood sense alone. A co-brother is the by-marriage equivalent of a brother-in-law. Co-brothers are occasionally called co-sons-in-law, because together they are sons-in-law of the same set of in-laws. And in case you're wondering, de facto Indian English usage includes a female equivalent to co-brother: co-sister, used to refer to the relationship between two women who have married brothers.

Posted by Vishy at 09:35 AM | Comments (0)

May 13, 2006

Doubting Thomases for election promises

I went to a talk by Jon Bentley yesterday, where he covered a lot of interesting material on quick back-of-the-envelope estimations. I was certainly inspired by the doubting Thomas skepticism it aroused in me. Soon enough I got a chance to put it into action with none other than my Dad.

If you thought American politics were bad enough, consider an election promise made by the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) party in the southern Indian state of Tamil Nadu: two acres of land for everybody if they get elected. As it turns out, they did just get the mandate to form the state government. My Dad thought it wasn't that far fetched a promise. So will everyone receive their two acres? Let's see if the basic techniques of estimation I took home from Bentley's lecture would let me make a determination as to the feasibility of implementing this promise.

My data sources were limited because not a whole lot of information about the demographics of Tamil Nadu is online. I went to Tamil Nadu's Wikipedia page and learned that it has just over 62 million people in an area just over 130,000 km². I looked up the conversion factor from square kilometers to acres to considerable accuracy at the usual handy source. 130,000 square kilometers corresponds to approximately 32 million acres. 32 million acres for 62 million people translates to just under half an acre per person in Tamil Nadu--off by a factor of four from the promise.

Then my Dad said, 'It's clear they meant to give these two acres only to those who need it--the farmers.' I countered by saying that this modified version of the promise would be fulfilled only if no more than a quarter of Tamil Nadu's population were farmers. The DMK movement has traditionally had socialist roots in sympathy with those that work the fields of Tamil Nadu. There was no way it was going to win a plurality with such an obviously agro-favoring electoral promise if its electoral base was no more than 25% of the population. In other words, the chance of 'everyone', whoever that refers to, getting two acres of land from the government was as much as the chance of a snowball surviving intact in Alabama.

Boy, was that a fun estimation exercise! Thanks Mr. Bentley! If only the electorate in Tamil Nadu had a few more skeptics...

Posted by Vishy at 01:24 AM | Comments (0)

March 17, 2006

Vishy's Indian English Dictionary: bandicoot

bandicoot./BAN·di·KOOT/. A rodent similar to the rat, but much larger. I've seen bandicoots running around in drains that I've mistaken for small dogs. Much like their cousins in New York City, they root through garbage at night and make eerie rustling sounds when they run through grass or dried leaves. The etymology of this word seems to be traceable to the Telugu pandi + kokku (lit. pig-rat). In my mind though the word usually evokes the odd image of a bandit-raccoon. I dread to think of how an ordinary Indian bandicoot would take to the, ahem, hormonally enhanced food in the United States. It might just turn out to be Winston Smith's worst nightmare, or some homeless person's sustenance for a week. As it turns out, bandicoot is also used to refer to an entirely unrelated and supposedly cuter marsupial in the outback Down Under.

Posted by Vishy at 10:41 PM | Comments (0)

February 20, 2006

Vishy's Indian English Dictionary: gravy

gravy./GRAY·vee/. Sauce that forms the 'background' of an Indian entree. Indians tend to refer to it as gravy rather than sauce (which is occasionally used to refer to tomato ketchup). Note that gravy can be vegetarian or not--unlike Western gravy, it need not be formed from juices that drip from cooking meat. Vegetarian gravies can be made of just about anything that blends together to form a sauce, such as tomatoes, onions, cream, nuts or coconut. Neither does gravy have to served alongside, say, mashed potatoes; the gravy forms an integral part of the meal.

When trying to figure out a entree they haven't heard of, many Indians tend to ask, "Is it dry or does it have a gravy"? A 'dry' entree would consist of vegetables mildly sauteed or tossed together with spices. A gravy entree would be like the stereotypical image of an Indian meal in most American minds: heavy, creamy and saucy.

Posted by Vishy at 11:18 AM | Comments (1)

February 18, 2006

Vishy's Indian English Dictionary: crib

crib./krib/. To complain. In most observed cases though, it's closer to kvetching or whinging. According to the Indian English sense of this word, a crib sheet would be what Martin Luther nailed to the door of a Catholic church to start off the Reformation, and not a handy précis of several useful formulae to take with you to an examination room or a sheet of paper found in a baby's sleep area. Typical usage includes "Why do you keep cribbing and ruining my day, yaar?" or "She should simply stop cribbing and adjust."

Posted by Vishy at 12:38 AM | Comments (0)

January 29, 2006

Funny signs from India

Indians can sometimes be really funny when they least intend to be. One of the themes of this blog is to attempt to explain some things Indians say and do (my Indian English Dictionary hopefully helps a little) so that outsiders find them less funny and take them more seriously. Regardless, there are some things that make me laugh-out loud and are yet inimitably Indian. As examples, I present a few signs I saw on a recent trip to India. I didn't have my digital camera with me at all times to take real pictures of the signs, but I've tried to reproduce them as best as I could from visual memory.

This Chennai road safety sign demonstrates the amazing Indian propensity to sound cool through rhyme, even at the expense of grammar. My mom once won a slogan competition for a detergent named Surf. Her entry was "There is no dispute/Surf has no substitute". At least it was grammatical! Sadly, unlike her entry, it is exceedingly common to find examples of grammar being easily nixed just for the sake of a rhyme. Even when I was dabbling with writing English poetry (didn't we all in our hormonal teen years?), I always stuck to rigid rhyme schemes and couplet forms. Only later, with the mind-expanding influences of poets like e e cummings did I learn to appreciate non-rhyming poetry.

I was stuck in traffic in an autorickshaw in Chennai and I was feeling very irritated. Yet, when I saw the above sign at the intersection, I almost fell over laughing. Seeing God mentioned anywhere on road safety signs is unthinkable in the United States -- Michael Newdow and other Establishment Clause-mongering lawyers would have too much of a field day. Although the sign got my attention and appealed to my sense of humor, I doubt many Americans would find it funny. Can't deny its originality though.

I saw this sign for a mini-mall/shopping complex in my mother's hometown. The spelling of Plazaa shown is probably intentional -- a sort of cool eye-dialect. However, the swastika is almost definitely uninentional. The swastika has been associated with well-being, health and prosperity in India long before the Nazis perverted it for their purposes. Yet, its momentous appearance along with 'German' is hard not to pass by without doing a double-take.

This was a funny, witty and yet strangely humbling chalk scrawl I saw on a temple whiteboard in my mother's hometown. I have yet to see a more succinct expression of the difference between humanity and divinity, viz. transcending characteristically human pettiness.

Posted by Vishy at 04:41 PM | Comments (0)

Vishy's Indian English Dictionary: baba suit

baba suit. /BAH·bah·soot/. A formal or festive suit worn by young boys, say in the tween segment and below. Several masculine-feminine word pairs in Hindi differ only in their final vowel -- feminine words end in -i and their masculine counterparts attach -a to the same stem. This technique is extended to the English word baby, assumed feminine because of the final -i, resulting in a synthetic masculine, baba. Note that baba, on its own, can independently refer to an old wise man. Indeed, several holy men of India have adopted the baba sobriquet, such as Sathya Sai Baba. However, the baba in baba suit takes only after the young boy sense. So next time you encounter the word BABA SUIT garishly painted on a store sign in India, don't go off thinking they're selling intact suits of sheep wool -- y'know "Baa baa black sheep ... and one for the little boy who lives down the lane".

Posted by Vishy at 04:03 PM | Comments (0)

January 27, 2006

Vishy's Indian English Dictionary: Naxalite

naxalite. /NACK·suhl·ite/. Despite sounding like the name of a mineral, a naxalite is someone with communist sympathies who believes in and strives for the violent overthrow of parliamentary government (not all Indian communists subscribe to this philosophy; India fosters an enigmatic polity where communist governments have been chosen multiple times in free elections). The word naxalite comes from Naxalbari, a town in West Bengal, where a 1967 meeting marked the birth of this violent movement. Today, naxalites have spread well beyond the borders of West Bengal and have been encountered in a belt stretching across central-southeast India. Many of today's active naxalites are affiliated with the People's War Group (PWG), an organization of guerrilla fighters formed in1980 in Andhra Pradesh to achieve an organized peasant insurrection against elected government.

Posted by Vishy at 08:25 PM | Comments (0)

January 26, 2006

Vishy's Indian English Dictionary: permit room

permit room. /puhr·MIT·room/. An enclosed area in a restaurant where alcoholic beverages may be served legally. Other than in cities with a thriving pub culture, places serving alcohol in India are usually attached to a restaurant or other establishment whose primary purpose is not to serve alcoholic beverages. However, alcohol's status as a controlled substance dictates that it not be served everywhere in the restaurant. Moreover, alcohol is not a native part of Indian cuisine and is generally thought to be consumed only by intemperate youngsters who then proceed to engage in ungainly activities like eveteasing. Therefore, in addition to legal reasons, serving alcohol everywhere in a restaurant would put off families who would like to dine there. By restricting alcohol to a certain controlled area, a restaurant can attract business from both the intemperate youngster and family segments.

Posted by Vishy at 08:15 PM | Comments (0)

January 25, 2006

Vishy's Indian English Dictionary: mess

mess. /mes/. Any place where common meals are eaten. One sense of this word in the West, ultimately derived from Lat. mittere, to place, refers to a common eatery for soldiers or sailors. Although not specifically an Indian English word, mess is used in a wider sense in India than in other major English speaking countries. In Indian English, it can refer to any place that functions as a large-scale kitchen, which may or may not cater to a community that lives together. Student dormitories (usually referred to as hostels in India) have attached messes, where residents can get their meals. Large governmental or other administrative offices have an Officers' Mess, where employees having a certain rank can dine during the workday. Mess is also used self-referentially by several hole-in-the-wall restaurants (which are frequently referred to as hotels all over India, even if they don't offer accommodation).

I should note that I haven't heard anyone use the word mess in the United States for anything other than the amorphous blob of untidiness in a room or for the perplexing intricacies of a situation.

Posted by Vishy at 08:14 PM | Comments (0)

December 20, 2005

Vishy's Indian English Dictionary: load shedding

load shedding. /lOHd·shed·ding/. Load shedding refers to the stoppage of the power supply to places where demand for electrical power exceeds supply. Load shedding is not just a power outage at an arbitrary time, like the North American Blackout of August 2003. It takes the form of systematic cuts in the power supply so that demand and supply can be reconciled a little and so the affected areas can work around it. Sometimes, especially in heavily populated areas, load shedding is instituted during heat waves or cold waves as a temporary matter (sign up or use BugMeNot) to overcome excess demand for power. In other areas, where it's a fact of life, locals get around it by equipping themselves with fossil-fuel powered generators that add to the South Asian Brown Cloud. Hopefully soon, the power and infrastructure situation will iron itself out enough to attract more foreign investors, who, in turn, will only accelerate any improvement in the long term.

Posted by Vishy at 01:16 AM | Comments (0)

November 21, 2005

Vishy's Indian English Dictionary: godown

godown. /GO·down/. A warehouse or storage location, especially near a body of water. Thought to be derived from the Malay godong. Goods of all sorts are stored in godowns, as opposed to U.S. English specializations of storage spaces, such as silos and warehouses.

Godowns are often great locations for Bollywood's legendary fighting scenes. Somewhat like Dr. Evil's lair, a secret godown is usually the site for illicit drug or alcohol related activity. The hero of the movie barges in with his crew, topples LOTS of boxes to get to the villain's henchmen. Eventually, someone decides to start a fire in the godown. The hero and villain engage in a final confrontation and the hero somehow succeeds in trapping the villain (or his stunt double) under tons of heavy boxes that conveniently contain explosives (remember, godowns can store anything). The fire gets to the explosive and the villain turns to ashes in an infernal fireball. All after lots of inane fighting.

So, next time you see a godown in a Hindi movie, you can rest assured that the plot is only going to go down from then on.

Posted by Vishy at 10:21 PM | Comments (0)

October 31, 2005

Thousands lakhs and crores oh my!

Those outsiders who follow the Indian press may occasionally come across statistics cited using the Indian system of numeracy. Rather than proceed in thousands, millions and billions, the Indian system of enumeration proceeds with thousands, lakhs and crores. Western systems of enumeration group digits by threes. The number 1048576 would be split up as 1 048 576 (one million, forty eight thousand five hundred and seventy six). The Indian system splits a large number into groups of two, except for the rightmost group, which contains three digits. A thousand ones make up a thousand (duh!), but a hundred thousand is a lakh and a hundred lakhs is a crore. 1048576 would thus be split as 10 48 576 (10 lakhs, forty eight thousand five hundred seventy six). Hindi newscasts frequently use the word arab (most likely unrelated to the ethnicity) to refer to one hundred crores. Other than that, modern Indian numeracy stops at the crore and anything higher is expressed just in terms of crores, e.g. one billion would be expressed as 10,000 crores.

The origins of lakhs and crores lie, as with so many other cultural artifacts, in Sanskritic antiquity. Lakh and crore are the modern day descendants of Sanskrit's laksha and koti. The ancients definitely knew what they were doing with the Sanskrit system of numeracy. There are named points for each power of 10 in the decimal system, all the way from 10⁰ to 10¹⁸. The names are as follows

Number	Sanskrit	English equivalent
1	ekam	one
10	dasham	ten
100	shatam	hundred
1 000	sahasra	thousand
10 000	dasha-sahasra	ten thousand
100 000	laksha	hundred thousand
1 000 000	dasha-laksha	million
10 000 000	koti	ten million
100 000 000	dasha-koti	hundred million
1 000 000 000	abja	billion
10 000 000 000	kharva	ten billion
100 000 000 000	nikharva	hundred billion
1 000 000 000 000	padma	trillion
10 000 000 000 000	mahapadma	ten trillion
100 000 000 000 000	shankhu	hundred trillion
1 000 000 000 000 000	jaladhi	quadrillion
10 000 000 000 000 000	antya	ten quadrillion
100 000 000 000 000 000	madhya	hundred quadrillion
1 000 000 000 000 000 000	parardha	quintillion

By naming every power of ten, the ancient Indian system tried to combat number numbness, a term coined by the venerable but excessively-in-love-with-his-own-ideas academician, Douglas Hofstadter (it's hard to allot this guy a field, such as computer science, neuroscience, philosophy or psychology). The human brain can easily comprehend numbers under ten or even a hundred. Anything over that and you'll see eyes beginning to glaze over. I'd be willing to wager that this is somehow related to the magical rule of 150 that governs human social interactions.

It's well worth considering that the progress of human mathematics has usually happened as and when necessity dictated it. For example, zero was most likely invented in a business context, to indicate a perfect balance of credit and debit. The ancient societies of the Sanskritic era most likely didn't have 10¹⁸ of anything, but they definitely would have been perfectly at home with the concept of an exabyte (10¹⁸ bytes), which is a unit that modern storage technology is approaching only now. Heck, they'd probably even be comfortable with the magnitude of Avogadro's number: 10²³. I don't know what drove the ancient Indians to come up with such a sophisticated system of numeracy when they probably had nothing to apply it to (perhaps the closest viable prospect is cosmogony -- the ancient Indians came up with the best estimate of the earth's 4.5bn year age before the advent of modern radiocarbon dating techniques: an eerily close 4.32bn). Viewed from another perspective though, it shouldn't come as a surprise, given the ancient Indian's passion for enumerating interesting things of all kinds.

Posted by Vishy at 12:14 AM | Comments (0)

October 28, 2005

Vishy's Indian English Dictionary: cousin brother, cousin sister

cousin sister,/KUH·zin·sis·tuhr/,cousin brother/KUH·zin·bruh·thuhr/. Respectively, female or male child of your parents' siblings. Known in the West as first cousins, without any further gender qualification. Indian kinship terms are exceedingly elaborate, with single words for concepts that take many words to express in English. Cousin brother is most likely a direct translation of the Hindi chachera/mamera bhai, where the second word translates to brother. The first word denotes how their parent is related to you. Chachera is derived from chacha, which means father's younger brother. Mamera is derived from mama, which means mother's brother (no word on older or younger).

In most Indian extended families, there are separate words to mark the birth-order of same-sex siblings of one's parents. In other words, there would be separate words for one's mother's older and younger sisters or one's father's older and younger brothers. However, there are no separate words to mark the birth order of opposite-sex siblings of one's parents. In other words, the same words are used to refer to older and younger sisters of one's father or older and younger brothers of one's mother. This distinction might be due to remnants of ancient familial structures, where same-sex siblings of one's parents were accorded a status very close to one's parents -- almost surrogate parents (consider that extended families in ancient India often lived under the same roof). Same-sex siblings of one's parents would often be able to substitute for one's parents' caregiving duties. In contrast, opposite sex siblings would often end up in separate households after marriage and wouldn't be able to care for each other's siblings as effortlessly. Accordingly, cousins whose parents are same-sex siblings are considered to be related almost as closely as though they were direct siblings. Cousins whose parents are opposite-sex siblings are considered more distant than cousins whose parents are same-sex siblings. Consequently, it is easier for cousins related through opposite-sex siblings to marry than cousins related through same-sex siblings. Cousin marriages are not necessarily the norm in India, but are not nearly as taboo as they are in the United States.

Posted by Vishy at 11:35 PM | Comments (0)

October 17, 2005

Vishy's Indian English Dictionary: cold drink

cold drink./KOH·ld·REENK/. Any cold nonalcoholic beverage, such as Coca Cola, Pepsi or other sodas (which some weird few call pop). Advertised ubiquitously on Mumbai-area billboards and shop signs in Marathi letters that can be transliterated only as Koldreenk, not cold drink as English speakers say it. When an Indian host receives a guest, they frequently ask them in the vernacular, "Hot? Cold? Tea, coffee, cold drink?", which should be understood as their asking the guest if they want a warm or a cold drink, such as tea, coffee or cold drinks.

As an aside, India has had several indigenously manufactured soft drinks that have a rich sweet taste as elusive as that of New York's pizza. I attribute it to the distinctive taste of sugar from the sugarcane that grows in the Indian heartland. Of course, there's also the healthy Indian urge to experiment with tastes that the Western tongue wouldn't dream of daring to attempt (Coca Cola with garam masala, anyone?). My favorites have been Limca (think 'a nonalcoholic Smirnoff Ice'), Gold Spot (think 'a fizzier orange Fanta'), Thumbs Up (think 'a much fizzier version of Coca Cola') and Maaza (a mango drink available in Indian stores in the U.S.). In Southern India, several towns feature goti soda, a salty carbonated drink sold in a bottle sealed with a glass marble (goti: glass marble, Marathi) and panneer soda, a carbonated drink flavored with a distinctive rose taste (panneer: rose, Tamil). Other drinks, such as Frooti (much idolized by the hilarious Ludakrishna and MC Vikram) are served in paper cartons. Their provenance as a cold drink in the above sense is murkier; only some would consider Frooti a proper cold drink.

In contrast to all the above, several sociocultural groups in India use the bare noun 'drink' to refer generically to alcoholic drinks.

Posted by Vishy at 01:09 AM | Comments (0)

October 10, 2005

Vishy's Indian English Dictionary: to sit on someone's head

to sit on someone's head. To take undue advantage of someone after they have shown you a little bit of kindness. Appears to be a direct translation of the Hindi phrase, sar par baith jaana.

Usually used contemptuously to berate someone's continued request for favors. For example, when traveling long distances on Indian Railways in second class coaches (aside: possibly traumatic for outsiders, yet highly recommended if you want to see the soul of India), people with no reserved seats will frequently board the train and ask nicely if one of their ass-cheeks could please share your reserved seat with you for just a little while. Trying to be nice and being eager to make a new acquaintance, you may let them share your seat with you properly. Then, as they get more comfortable, out come the elaborate spread of food and outstretched legs that push you further into the corner of your legitimately reserved seat. Soon afterwards, long-lost cousins emerge mysteriously from the woodwork and join the stowaway. After much pleading and cajoling from the stowaways in small doses, it eventually becomes a party of stowaways, with the result that you get completely marginalized in the very seat you legitimately purchased. In sum, you gave 'those types' one little inch of leeway and they ended up sitting on your head.

Posted by Vishy at 12:13 AM | Comments (0)

October 05, 2005

Vishy's Indian English Dictionary: thermocol

thermocol./thərmo·kAWl/. A polystyrene insulating material manufactured in the U.S. as Styrofoam®. In common American language, this trademark is referred to simply as a common noun, styrofoam. The Indian form, thermocol, is in currency in a few other countries as well, notably Japan and Australia, as revealed by a Google search. This form makes the insulating function of the material more explicit. There seems to be a significant presence of a variant spelling of this word, thermocole.

Thermocol is a very versatile material. In India, it is used in many ways, including packaging and making towering cutouts of political figures, gods and goddesses. The much-celebrated Ganapati and Navaratri festivals in Mumbai feature large thematic public displays involving copious amounts of thermocol. What is strictly a utilitarian material in the U.S., used solely for packaging and manufacturing drab excuses for tableware, is actually used by Indians to great artistic effect.

Posted by Vishy at 11:02 PM | Comments (0)

August 28, 2005

Vishy's Indian English Dictionary: black money

black money./blæk·muh·NEE/. Akin to dark matter that makes up most of the universe but isn't actually detectable by our instruments of observation, black money is money that powers the Indian economy, but isn't subject to the mere trifles of accounting or tax audits. Remittances and receipts for big-ticket items are hardly ever publicly disclosed in full. The official cost for an item is expressed in so-called 'white money'. In truth, the seller usually charges the buyer some more money under the radars of accountniks. The white and black portions of a remittance are always on separate checks. The particularly paranoid seller may choose to receive the black portion entirely in cash to reduce its traceability. The 'black' designation is also used idiomatically, as in, "This apartment will cost 35 lakhs, 25 of those in black."

Untaxed black money powers a parallel economy in India and fuels some exorbitantly affluent lifestyles that occasionally make outsiders forget that India is a developing country. Men of industry are reminded how un-self-made they are as they periodically draw grudgingly from their pools of black money to pay protection money to various goons. Black money also fuels the astonishing pace with which Bollywood makes movies. Occasionally, pangs of guilt seize a businessman as he approaches his demise and coerce him to bring his black money into whiteland by donating generously towards constructing hospitals and libraries for public welfare, or temples for private salvation.

To give credit where it is due, black money's stranglehold on India's economy has shrunk considerably in the last decade or so due to increased calls for transparency and government measures extending clemency over declared assets. Nevertheless, on occasion, it makes one wonder where all the crores of rupees being doled out on Kaun Banega Crorepati? (India's Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?) come from.

Posted by Vishy at 07:22 PM | Comments (0)

August 16, 2005

A comparison of classical music styles

Classical music in Hindi and other Indian languages is called shastriya sangeet. Shastriya derives from the Sanskrit shastra, which means science or method. Whereas classical music in the Western tradition is merely classical, meaning old, its equivalent in Indian languages points to a fundamental science of sound underlying the Indian tradition of classical music.

The science behind Indian classical music is codified in ancient Indian texts such as the Vedas. The chants of Samaveda, one of the four principal Vedas, are set to a scale of seven notes, rather than just three, as in the other Vedas. The standard ascending scale with seven notes is sung as 'Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Dha Ni' and corresponds to the Western 'Do Re Mi Fa So La Ti'. Today, Indian classical music has two distinct traditions in North and South India. The North Indian style of Indian classical music is commonly known as the Hindustani style and was heavily patronized by the Muslim dynasties that ruled from Delhi during the late Middle Ages. It has significant Persian and Central Asian influences in both instrumentation and tonality. The South Indian style of Indian classical music is known as the Carnatic (from karu nadu, 'black land' -- refers to the dark soil of the South Indian peninsula) style. Relatively isolated from Muslim and other foreign influences, it is arguably closer to the style expounded in ancient Sanskrit texts. As much as possible, this essay will make claims that apply to both styles of Indian classical music, as contrasted with Western classical music.

The Indian classical music octave is considerably richer than the Western classical music octave. The full Western octave consists of twelve notes. The full Indian classical octave contains twenty-two notes. In Western classical music, tonal clarity is highly valued and any emotion is conveyed in how a note is struck by a vocalist or instrumentalist. Indian classical music, in contrast, employs rapidly fluctuating microtones, notes that may fall between the standard twenty-two, to accentuate a standard note. To some Western ears, this sounds like a compromise on tonal clarity, but the value of microtones becomes clearer upon listening deeply to Indian classical music.

Indian classical music is based around the central concept of a raaga. A raaga is a tonal framework that circumscribes those notes that are allowed in a classical music composition and those that are not. Every classical music piece is set to a raaga. For example, if a song is set to Raaga Yaman, it can feature the notes C, D, E, F^#, G, A and B. Every musical composition begins with an ascending and descending scale appropriate to its raaga and proceeds to expound on those scales. Because every composition doesn't stand on its own but is backed by a raaga, there is considerable scope for improvisation when it is actually performed. My understanding is that in Western music, special courses in composition must be taken if an instrumentalist or vocalist wants to make music, and not just play it. In contrast, the most basic course in Indian classical music, be it vocal or instrumental, includes material about several basic raagas and tips on composition. Raagas have fascinating cultural artifacts attached to them as well. For each raaga, there are suggestions about the time of day in which it is best sung. Certain raagas are even said to induce fire and rain!

Raagas provide an extremely convenient and advanced framework for categorizing existing musical compositions and generating new ones. Musical composition, as with any other creative line of work, requires considerable talent. However, having a standard framework of raagas for reference gives the composer a set of rules that they can both follow and flout creatively. My friends say I am frequently guilty of using computer science analogies when not strictly necessary. Western classical music compositions are like incredibly polished looking software programs, perfected to every imaginable degree and handed off to instrumentalists and vocalists. Just as preferences may be changed in Windows XP each time it is booted up, different things may be emphasized over others during different performances. At its core, however, the piece always stays the same. The thought of riffing freestyle on The Moonlight Sonata during a performance seems unimaginable to most composers and audiences. In contrast, raagas act as a library of musical programs. They can be composed together on the fly, just as with Unix commands, to produce a composition that could well vary in its musical notes at each performance.

It is said that one of the most important inventions of the Western world is polyphonic music. The sonorous compositions of the early Baroque period seem wondrously dazzled at their own use of multiple voice and instrumental parts. Indian classical music, in contrast, is largely homophonic. I recall reading a Yehudi Menuhin essay, where he states that polyphonic music stands as an allegory to Western civilization itself, where each member of society gives up a little freedom to participate in the construction of a greater gestalt. He notes that that the awe-inspiring cathedrals of Europe are constructed in the same vein. In contrast, an Indian classical music performance consists of mostly autonomous virtuosos, whose musical strains intersect in intricate ways to yield a performance. This is said to be an analogy to Indian society, where everyone pretty much does whatever they want with less regard to what their actions may add up to in the aggregate than in Western civilizations. Some may say it is unfortunate that Indian civilization did not discover polyphonic music in its extremely long music history. Indian classical music more than makes up for this deficiency with its well-developed body of knowledge about rhythms and percussion. Western classical music may have the occasional tympani beat to accentuate a musical phrase, but subordinates rhythm to melody and reduces rhythm to a matter of counting out beats. On the other hand, the crucially central raaga aspect of an Indian classical music piece shares the stage with its taala aspect, which lays down the rhythmic scheme of the composition. Most Indian classical music performances feature percussion solos when they reach their improvisational phase. Listeners of Indian classical music are as keenly aware of the rhythmic scheme of a piece as they are of its melodic scheme.

Perhaps the best aspect of Indian classical music is that it has two distinct styles. These styles are clearly seen to descend from a common tradition. However, in their present form, they contain many regional Indian influences, which provide valuable counterpoints to each other when they are juxtaposed. One of the crowd-pleasing forms of Indian classical music performance is the jugalbandi, where musicians from the two styles interpret the same raaga and fire musical phrases back and forth in a lively musical debate. Western classical music, in contrast, seems to emphasize distinctive musical traditions less than Indian classical music. Because it lacks the raaga framework, it is hard anyway to come across an apples-to-apples comparison of how different musical styles may interpret a broad set of rules regarding tonal composition.

If you have never listened to Indian classical music and are intrigued by the points in this essay, spend some time in the World Music of a music store and look for Indian music titles, ensuring that they are not Bollywood titles. You will definitely not regret this portion of your overall musical experience.

Posted by Vishy at 10:37 PM | Comments (1)

August 11, 2005

Goings and comings in Tamil

A commonly encountered word-related question is: "What is an English word that means the same thing as its opposite?" One commonly cited answer to this question is "cleave", which can mean both to join things together or split them apart in different senses.

As I was talking to my family in Tamil the other day, I realized that Tamil too has such a word. It's not some obscure word like cleave but the very pedestrian varal, "to come" (first person singular present progressive varen, 'I am coming', second person imperative vango, "Come!"). In many situations, the same word, varen, is used in the sense of going as well. The rationale that underpins this strange usage has roots in social customs of politeness. It is customary for a Tamilian taking leave of someone else under normal circumstances not to say "I am going" but to say instead, "I am (leaving now and) returning." To actually say "I am going" indicates that the speaker intends never to return, such as when they don't want future social contact with the audience of the statement. Some superstitious types also believe that by saying "I am going", one portends their own imminent passing from this world.

As it turns out, "I am (leaving now and) returning" is spoken as "I am coming again." It isn't always necessary to include the adverbial modifier 'again'. This results in the somewhat weird situation of someone saying "I am coming" when they actually mean "I am going". It isn't that varal, to come, and its forms semantically entail the senses of both coming and going. In fact, if you were to ask any Tamilian what varal meant, they would say it only means 'to come'. However, out of politeness and social custom, they would use forms of varal when they indicate their desire to leave some place.

That's it for now. I am coming.

Posted by Vishy at 10:00 PM | Comments (1)

August 09, 2005

Vishy's Indian English Dictionary: to expire

expire./eks·PAH·yər/. Die. Pass away. Kick the bucket. Origin unclear. Possibly from the sense of expiring that means exhaling. Another more demeaning and less likely possibility lies in the sense of to expire like a carton of milk or a package of cold medicine. Probably the most common death-related euphemism in India because it doesn't mention death or passing away directly. For example, "My father expired when I was two, before I could form my earliest memories of him."

Posted by Vishy at 10:20 PM | Comments (0)

August 01, 2005

Vishy's Indian English Dictionary: STD booth

STD booth./ESS·TEE·DEE·booth/. At first glance, it may seem a bit like a confession booth-like structure with a skanky ho inside -- your one-stop shop for contracting a sexually transmitted disease. However, sadly, Indians get by transmitting STDs to each other just fine, even without STD booths. STD booths brought about the recent telecom revolution in India. STD stands for Subscriber Trunk Dialing, the official name of national long-distance telephone service in India. Most STD booths also allow you to make international long-distance telephone calls, which are referred to by the abbreviation ISD, short for International Subscriber Dialing. They also offer payphones for ordinary local calls, and thus serve as a Public Call Office (PCO). Thousands of such booths marked with modest signs saying 'STD·ISD·PCO' mushroomed in the Indian countryside in the 90s. They employed several rural youth and were as good as a box marked 'Cash Cow -- just add water'. In part, they fueled the expansion of Internet access to remote areas in rural India.

Before the days of STD, people used to make operator-assisted long-distance calls, which were known simply as Trunk Calls. STD removed a human operator and put the power of trunk dialing in the hands of the subscribers themselves. In recent years, particularly in Mumbai, the telephone authority is trying Ingsoc-like to phase out the abbreviation STD and replace it with NSD (National Subscriber Dialing), the national analogue to ISD. However, STD occupies a special place in most people's minds and is by far the dominant abbreviation used to refer to national long distance. The abbreviation STI (Sexually Transmitted Infection) sometimes comes in handy when distinguishing between the senses of STD.

Posted by Vishy at 10:16 AM | Comments (0)

July 27, 2005

Vishy's Indian English Dcionary: 420

420./FOWR·TWEN·tee/ (also char-sau-bees /TCHAR·sow·BEES/, Hin. four hundred and twenty). The condition of being guilty, either directly or by association, of petty crime. Also used of a generally sketchy person -- someone the British would call 'dodgy'. Origin appears to be from Section 420 of the Indian Penal Code (don't giggle like a 12 year old -- this 1854 statute instituted by the British is the closest to a general code of criminal procedure in India), which deals with petty theft and other small crimes. The closest U.S. equivalent would be a small-time conman with a longish rap sheet. Petty crime in general is referred to as char-sau-beesi -- the business of being a 420. In some slang subcultures, 840 (420 x 2) is used to denote someone who oversteps the boundaries of sketchiness circumscribed by a mere 420.

It is an interesting meeting of minds that 420 is used in the U.S. in the context of drug-related char-sau-beesi. 420 is a signal word for marijuana and other related activities. The origin of this sense of 420 is linked with a ritual of several school students gathering in the school parking lot at 4:20pm to smoke pot.

Posted by Vishy at 03:26 AM | Comments (0)

July 21, 2005

How different are they really?

India came of age as I was growing up there in the 90s. Three pivotal moments stand out in my memory as having had particular significance to Indian society. The first was when our current Prime Minister, Dr. Manmohan Singh, then finance minister (approximately Secretary of the Treasury, for you U.S.ians) opened up an antiquated socialist economic system and paved the way to globalization, thus allowing American products to be sold in Indian markets with greater ease. The second, around the same time, was when the Gulf War began and cable channels started beaming it and American television shows directly into Indian living rooms. A few years later, the Internet became accessible to Ashok Kumar, the Indian equivalent of John Doe according to Wikipedia. American culture, which had heretofore been beheld with a mixture of suspicion and fascination because so little of it came through, was flooding through the airwaves and encouraging a glamorous shop-till-you-drop consumerist attitude.

India had opened up. The air was infectiously electric with the thousands of possibilities that lay before the numerous starry-eyed youth. Of course, the sudden flood of American culture was not universally greeted with optimism. A band of culture vultures, claiming to guard true Indian culture against onslaught from evil Western culture, sprang up to warn the younger generation against aping American culture too literally. The extremists claimed American culture was so different from Indian culture that adopting it would necessarily mean the end of Indian values as Indian society knew it. The moderates among them prescribed a syncretic approach to the young generation and advised them to combine the best of the two cultures. I was encouraged to examine the postulates of both sides critically and choose my own path. I continued to think about which aspects of American culture to integrate into my life after I started living in the U.S. My observations and thinking led me to believe that aside from economic conditions, which influence Indian and American societies in vastly different ways, Indian and American cultures are really not all that different.

For starters, they're both highly idealistic and romanticizing cultures. Indian culture exalts people who have apotheosized human values such as love, pride and valor. India has had traditions such as sati, where a widow would jump into her dead husband's funeral pyre so as to join him even in his death. Then there is the much-idealized tale of Anarkali, a courtesan in the Mughal court of Akbar ('The Great'), who accepted a fate of death by being walled-in for the sake of love. Indian movies, especially in the mid-to-late 90s, were idealistic (sometimes sickeningly so) tales that revolved around family and the sublimation of individual desires and aspirations to the will of the family. We find a similar idealistic bent in the United States as well. The U.S. was born as a result of an experiment in democracy. In a significant departure from the feudalistic and royal traditions of old, for the first time, one document, the U.S. Constitution, was revered as the foundation of the country, to the point of almost being worshipped. A lot of American idealism springs from the fact that allegiance to the U.S. was fundamentally tied to believing in the idea of the U.S. After World War I, Woodrow Wilson worked enthusiastically to advance the ideal of an international organization, the League of Nations, where problems between countries would be resolved in peace. That experiment, however, failed to hold its own against the harsh realities of the interwar period. The role of the woman as a homemaker was idealized to such an extent in the U.S. that by the time feminism hacked it to pieces, it was no surprise. U.S. educational institutions are full of fraternities and sororities, organizations that are held together by nothing more than a few commonly held ideals. American romantic comedies are always received well by the American crowd, no matter how improbable their ending would be in real life.

Indian culture and American culture are both highly individualistic cultures. American culture is well known for its strain of rugged New World individualism, possibly inspired by the Iroquois nation. Indian culture, at first glance, doesn't encourage a devil-may-care, independent attitude. So what individualism am I talking about here? I once read an interesting article on Sulekha.com, whose thesis was that Indian culture is also fiercely individualistic not at the level of the individual, but at the level of the family. The whims of the individual are usually subject to censure by the elders, who represent the best interests of the family in the abstract. However, outside of a family, a docile, uncompetitive attitude is discouraged. Individual members of a family are driven along just as much to compete and glorify its name as individual high-achievers are in the United States to achieve personal glory. I have since lost the reference to this article, but I would be infinitely grateful if anyone could point me to it. We see examples of this drive for family glory even in the millennia old epic Mahabharata, whose plot revolves principally around family rivalries.

As somewhat of a corollary to their idealizing nature, Indians and Americans both live in a culture that encourages excess. The over consumption of contemporary American society, especially when contrasted with historically low incomes, is a well documented fact that leads to America's gaping trade deficit. This idea is expounded upon endlessly by the likes of Thomas L. Friedman and Stephen Roach. Americans seem to have absolutely no problems living hand to mouth from paycheck to paycheck, while simultaneously accumulating tons of credit card debt. Indian society too has historically encouraged stretching every last rupee one has well beyond reasonable means. Indian literature has an abundance of stories of men taking on ridiculous amounts of debt and slaving away for generations to repay it if only it would mean weddings and dowries of acceptable grandeur for their daughters. Indian cuisine and American cuisine also share a common thread of richness and excess. The sweeter Indian sweets are, the better. The more ghee that is used to make these sweets, the better. Similarly in the U.S., desserts try to bring together superlatives of every conceivable sort together. Deep-fried candy-bars, ultra-decadent brownies served à la mode with thick chocolate fudge and Ben and Jerry's ice-creams that combine three or four different flavors in one scoop are all the rage. The modern European esthetic of light, flufffy cakes and minimalistic desserts wouldn't fly very well in either middle America or India. As foods continue to get richer in both cuisines, the public health problem posed by various cardiovascular epidemics will be of epic proportions. The obesity epidemic in America has the impending diabetes epidemic in India as its companion.

Indian culture is therefore similar to American culture in many important ways that do not immediately meet the eye. So far, it has escaped some of the distinctive ills that plague American society, such as high divorce rate, crime, extraordinary litigiousness and unabashed consumerism. I am not entirely sure how, but I believe it is because the Generation Me of Indian society, which values individual needs over everything else and craves instant gratification, had not been born yet. Indian popular culture had and continues to have significant elements of middlebrow commentary, driven by the conviction that culture, education and high art are good for one's character. In contrast, American pop culture, as reflected in numerous contemporary magazines, has grown to be anti-intellectual, bland and excessively obsessed with celebrity lives. Times are changing rapidly in India though. India's Generation Me is being cultivated by relentless advertising on cable television targeted at the world's largest middle class. The improving economic conditions of Indian society and the birth of India's Generation Me might lead to Indian society's latent similarities with American society being actualized in the form of the same ills that trouble American society. However, Indian culture has been around for a lot longer than American culture and has seen several periods of affluence and decadence similar to the present day in U.S. Hopefully, it will prove to be resilient enough to come up with a creative and distinctively Indian way of avoiding these problems.

Posted by Vishy at 11:02 PM | Comments (2)

July 20, 2005

Vishy's Indian English Dictionary: From the Queen's English

The British may have introduced India to English, but India has since taken English and made the language its own. On an unrelated note, I think it's high time the entertainment industry in India wakes up to this fact and makes Bollywood movies in Hinglish and Mollywood movies in Tinglish. Back to the related note, despite English being a thoroughly Indian language, some words in it are direct transplants from British English. Some of these transplants have died out in British English but still endure in Indian English, to amusing effects. Without further ado, I'll simply list the words and the U.S. English equivalents. This one may be a fairly mundane entry for some, but these words deserve to be included if only for the sake of completeness.

• Inverted commas. Quotes. "As in, the first punctuation mark in this sentence."
  
• Lorry. Truck.
  
• Dustbin. Trash can.
  
• Visiting card. Business card.
  
• Maths. Mathematics, sometimes abbreviated math.
  
• Petrol. Fuel used in automobiles. Gasoline.
  
• Postman. Employee of one of the huge government monopolies.
  
• Zebra crossing. Pedestrian crosswalk, marked with white stripes.
  
• Issue. Offspring. Progeny. If a Indian priest tells a newly married you "I hope you will have many issues", don't bear him ill will. He is more than likely hoping you'll get busy soon and often.
  
• To bunk. To remain intentionally absent from a class. Skipping a class.
  
• Capsicum. Bell peppers.
  
• Proximo. Of the next month. "I am going to take the GREs on the 12th proximo" means you're taking them on the 12th of next month.
  
• Ultimo. Of the previous month. "The American Independence day was on the 4th ultimo" would be a valid statement to make in August.
  

Posted by Vishy at 01:52 AM | Comments (1)

July 19, 2005

Vishy's Indian English Dictionary: eveteasing

eveteasing. /EEV·TEE·sing/. Acts of making lewd comments at, staring at and generally harassing girls walking down the street. In some pathological cases, the distant precursor to eventual sexual assault on the target of these acts. Usually performed at street corners by so-called roadside Romeos, men who have nothing better to do than shower their unwanted and unsolicited attention on girls and women passing by. Like ragging, occasionally happens at educational institutions as well. Origin appears to be from Eve, the first woman according to Judæo-Christian mythology.

Posted by Vishy at 08:31 PM | Comments (3)

July 17, 2005

Vishy's Indian English Dictionary: SC/ST

SC/ST. /ESS·CEE·ESS·TEE/ Short for Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes. These are castes or tribes that have historically been disadvantaged in Indian society. The Indian government makes reservations, India's own form of affirmative action, in employment and education to benefit members of scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. The origin of the term is apparently in the Government of India Act, 1935, the last major move towards Indian autonomy enacted by its British colonial rulers. Today, the castes and tribes defined as SC/ST appear in the First Schedule of the Constitution of India. The term SC/ST is sometimes used as an adjective to describe a member of such a historically disadvantaged group. The term SC/ST sometimes includes other protected groups, such as OBC (Other Backward Castes), DT (Displaced Tribes) and NT (Nomadic Tribes). A powerful political force in India in recent decades, members of all the above protected groups sometimes collectively refer to themselves as Dalits.

In recent years, reservation quotas have grown to such an extent that it is advantageous to be a member of the above protected groups. Members can get documents from the government certifying their protected status for use in employment and academic applications. Such certificates are probably in as much demand as baptismal certificates among illegal immigrants in the United States.

Posted by Vishy at 09:39 PM | Comments (2)

July 13, 2005

Vishy's Indian English Dictionary: Lady's finger and brinjal

Today's entry features two of my all-time favorite foods.

lady's finger. /LAY·deez FIN·gər/. Any of a finger-length thin green vegetable with a downy covering on the outside and small white seeds covered in a gooey substance inside. Known within the United States as okra. Origin should be clear from the iconic resemblance. Lady's fingers are crunchy and very tasty, especially when prepared with the right spices. Unlike fingers attached to real ladies, they have no central bone that must be spit out after consumption. Unfortunately, lady's fingers are largely consumed boiled in the United States. This style of cooking turns a most delicious vegetable into a green goo with green bits, which resembles alien protoplasm. Fall not for this, O naïve Americans. Carry yourselves to an Indian restaurant and eat it as God intended it to be prepared.

brinjal. /BRIN·juhl/ or /brin·JAWL/. A plant known for its long purple fruit, which is consumed as a vegetable in Asia and Europe. Known also as aubergine in the United Kingdom and eggplant in the United States. Origin is from the Arabic al-badhinjan, which was transformed in two ways in 'downstream' languages. With the al, it became the source for 'aubergine'. Without the al, it was transformed into the Portuguese berinjela (also Spanish berenjena), which ended up in Indian and Sri Lankan English as brinjal. Brinjal is either loved or reviled by Indians. Ayurveda, the ancient Indian system of medicine, decries brinjal because it induces tamas, namely inertia, sloth and passivity. More recently though, brinjal has been shown to reduce cholesterol. In fact, an excellent cholesterol buster is a diet consisting of brinjal and lady's finger. That's one diet I definitely won't complain about.

Posted by Vishy at 09:29 PM | Comments (0)

July 08, 2005

Vishy's Indian English Dictionary: rubber

rubber. /rəb·ər/. A useful writing tool that is used to erase marks made by pencils. Generally known as an eraser in the United States. Why? Because it erases things! How then does 'rubber' make sense? Because it rubs things out!

If you are in any doubt about the sanity of referring to to such an operation as 'rubbing out', perhaps you'd like to know that you have used rub out many times by now, unless you are a touch typist that hasn't made a single typo in your life. RUBOUT is a sequence sent by keyboards to computers when you need to erase a character previously typed. RUBOUT (Ctrl-H, or occasionally Ctrl-?) can be interpreted as either a Backspace or a Delete depending on the settings of the computer system. Early Unix keyboards didn't have separate Backspace and Delete keys. They had one Rubout key, whose behavior could be configured.

Of course, the conventional usage of rubber in the United States is to refer to a male device for contraception and STD prevention. Many Indians come to the U.S. unaware of this fact and use rubber to refer to an eraser. There was a fairly painful scene in American Desi, IIRC, which used this fact to provide supposed comedic value. An Indian graduate student is teaching a recitation in a banal New Jersey university as a Teaching Assistant. During roll call, he pronounces Jesús not as /che·SOOS/, but as /JEE·səs/, as Anglo-Americans do. Later in the roll call he makes a mistake noting down somebody's attendance and asks a hot girl in the front row, "Miss, do you have a rubber"? Because she obviously interprets it as him asking for a condom, she says no. He goes on and asks, "Jesus, do you have a rubber?"

While I am talking about school stuff, I might as well give props to Devraj from Dick & Garlick for having undertaken a similar mission to mine in the area of demystifying Indian English. He makes another excellent Indian English entry which has eluded me: by-heart, used as a verb. By-hearting is the most used schooling technique in India and around the world. I owe a lot to by-hearting for getting me where I am today.

Posted by Vishy at 11:21 PM | Comments (1)

July 06, 2005

Vishy's Indian English Dictionary: Matrimonial

Matrimonial. /MAT·ruh·MON·eeyuhl/. An advertisement announcing the availability of a person for marriage. Provides some details about the person's looks and employment and lists their preferences in a potential mate. The simple act of advertising for a girlfriend landed a man some coverage by BBC. However, in India, eligible single people have been advertising their availability for marriage for several years now. When someone replies to a matrimonial ad, more complete summaries of the two peoples' lives are exchanged with the hope of finding a match.

If you have read my earlier ruminations about The Aunties' Network of arranged marriages, a matrimonial can be thought of as similar to a query posted to the network. Matrimonials differ from aunties' network messages in just two ways. First, because matrimonials appear in print or online publications, they have a much wider reach than the network of aunties accessibly from any aunty peer. As a result, they result in matches trickling in from outside one fully connected section of The Aunties' Network. Second, because they have a wider reach and are more impersonal, matrimonials contain fewer details than a query on The Aunties' Network. Queries on The Aunties' Network include significant amounts of verifiable information and sometimes include natal charts as well; details in matrimonial ads are mere teasers in comparison.

Matrimonials have led to an interesting subvocabulary of Indian English that deserves a multitude of 'Vishy's Indian English Dictionary' entries. Here's a page of sample matrimonials. Here are some explanations for words that appear in this page and in other matrimonials:

alliance

A match and the resulting coming together not just of two people but of their families as well.

bar

Constraint/consideration. Phrases like 'caste no bar' mean that the caste of a responder will not be a consideration.

wheatish

An adjective for complexion. The color of wheat -- not quite fair but not dark either, assuming a baseline Indian complexion. Some publications, adhering to the noble principle of being color blind, refuse to accept matrimonials with certain keywords in them, such as 'fair'. Clever matrimonial advertisers circumvent this restriction by substituting 'fair' with 'gori', the Hindi word for fair. White people advertising in a matrimonial shouldn't use 'fair' to describe their complexion. However, 'riceish' may work.

habits

Unhealthy habits, socially unacceptable to varying degrees, such as smoking, drinking and narcotic drugs.

domesticated

Not used in the 'When were dogs domesticated?' sense, domesticated is a term applied in particular to prospective brides that indicates a good sense for maintaining a home and cooking good food for her prospective husband.

Posted by Vishy at 02:30 PM | Comments (1)

July 04, 2005

Vishy's Indian English Dictionary: French beard

French beard. /FRE·nch BEE·yurd/. A pattern of facial hair with a thin moustache, which wraps around the lips to continue into a beard that covers the chin region only. The rest of the face, especially the cheeks, are clean shaven. Known generally in the United States as a goatee.

Origin unknown. The closest I could find was a mention of a facial hairstyle related to the goatee called the royale or impériale that was worn by French officers. Maybe the British taught this word a while back to the English speaking Indian classes to express their contempt at this hirsute hauteur and make fun of the French at the same time.

Posted by Vishy at 01:43 PM | Comments (0)

June 26, 2005

Vishy's Indian English Dictionary: nonveg

nonveg./NON·vej/
1. Any item from the meat, poultry and seafood food groups. A contraction of 'non-vegetarian food'. Frequently used as a substitute for 'meat' in sentences, but includes poultry and seafood as well. Common uses include "I don't eat any nonveg" or "I eat nonveg only on Wednesdays and Fridays". Keeping your ears peeled for mentions of 'nonveg' in a food context sometimes provides glimpses into the intricate and apparently nonsensical dietary habits of Indians. 'Nonveg' is well-understood at Indian food establishments and would probably even work in Indian restaurants in the U.S. However, to extend it to non-Indian food establishments in the U.S. may lead to unexpected results. Overheard at a pizza/deli in New York:

Indian guy: "Does that slice have nonveg?"
Latino behind the counter: "What you sayin' man?"
Indian guy: "Nonveg. Does that slice have any nonveg in it?"
Latino: "I don't understand you, amigo."
Indian guy: "Never mind. Is that slice veggie?"
Latino: "No. It's cheese."
Indian guy (bewildered): "The slice isn't veggie either?"
Latino: "It's a cheese slice."
Me (to the Latino): "That slice has no meat right?"
Latino: Right. It's just cheese.
Me (to the Indian guy): "It's all right. I am vegetarian too, and the cheese slice is okay. A veggie slice would have vegetables on it, lik