Sitaram Pandurang Bhat

This drab little book is a splendid example of the insight a phrase book can give into changing worlds. This edition is the 9th, printed in 1966, but surely written well before the end of the British Raj.

It starts straightforwardly with numbers, days of the week and interrogatives. Next we have 'Important adjectives' including blind and deaf, dirty, dusty, naked and muddy, cruel, wicked, dishonest and violent. We begin to get a picture!

Then come 'Useful and Necessary Expressions'. 'Make haste!' 'Be Silent!' 'Take off my boots' and the dubious 'Come to my house' followed by 'Put on your clothes'. Carriage drivers are told to stop beating their horses and to go away or be handed over to the Police.

'Eating and Drinking' acknowledges the usual difficulties of the Englishman in foreign parts. the water is not cold, the fruit is sour, the egg is not done and the meat is spoilt. To make things worse he cannot drink soda water. He does order a bottle of brandy and gets his cigar lit and then can agree that the curry is very good.

Servants are instructed firmly to never tell a lie and never steal anything and despite the stream of orders to come here, go there, carry this, empty that are finally told 'You are very lazy'. There are many domestic tribulations - his collars are limp, his clothes have been burnt and the washing has to be taken back and washed again. The barber is late and has a blunt razor.

The sahib knew about horses and there is quite detailed chat about cruppers, martingales and girths. It wasn't always plain sailing, though - three adjacent phrases are: 'The horse ran', 'He fell off the horse', 'He died'.

The English may (or may not) have owned the earth, but they were sometimes short of funds. 'Shopping and Purchasing' helps with complaints about high prices and the right terms on which to haggle, but it comes down to 'I have no cash', 'Come on pay-day'.

As expected, in 'Sports and pastimes', the pressing request is 'I want to shoot a tiger'. Rather unwisely, I'm afraid, he admits 'I do not know the game of billiards'. The section ends with a strange sequence: 'This is my monkey', 'The snake has bitten him', 'I want a white cat'.

If the Englishman was not in commerce or the civil service, he would probably have been in the army. Our hero tells us 'I belong to the artillery', and reassures us that 'I am very brave'. He calls for his gun but worryingly has to ask 'Is the gun loaded?' He can find the instructions here to dig a mine, to fix bayonets and to complain that he has not been saluted. We learn that his 'sword is rusty', that 'A prisoner has escaped' and, presumably, recaptured for 'He will be hanged tomorrow.' Another miscreant 'says that the jamadar is jealous of him,' but 'He was drunk and so he was absent.' We learn of a disastrous engagement - 'They opened fire on us.' 'One sepoy was wounded'. 'About 50 sepoys were taken prisoners.' '100 sepoys were killed'.

It's all a far cry from Bollywood and the entrpreneurs of Mumbai.… (mehr)