GLOSSARY for FJH stories

Bahadur – a great man; a brave man.

chaprassi - office servant; messenger (from chapras - brass buckle worn on belt). See also peon/ pattewala

chit - letter; note

civil list - Warrant or Order of Precedence, also known as the Green, Red or Blue Book

Collector - chief administrator of district, originally collector of revenue (see 'D.O.'). His office had an English department whose head clerk was called an aval karkun; and a vernacular department, whose head clerk was a chitnis. A deputy chitnis served the Collector’s other official duty, that of District Magistrate, and he had to be well up in the Police Act, and all law & order matters. The head of several talukas in a district was a pranth officer unless belonging to the IAS, in which case he was an Assistant Collector.

compound - enclosed area surrounding bungalow and servants' quarters

dacoit - robber, thus 'dacoity' - robbery

dak - post, thus dak-wallah - postman and dak-bungalow - government staging house.

dal/ dhal - lentils

D.O. - District Officer, executive head of district known as Collector, Deputy Commissioner or District Magistrate

dhoti -loose loincloth worn by caste Hindus

dhurri - rough cotton rug

goonda - bad character

GR – Government Resolution

hamal- house servant

hazur/huzoor - sir, honorific (lit. 'the presence')

heaven-born - honorific often used to denote the ICS

hill station - stations above 5,000 feet to which state and central governments transferred in the hot weather

hoshiyar – wary; careful; and by extension shrewdly watchful.

hullaballoo - uproar (from holo-bolo - to make a noise)

khansama - cook

khas-khas tatti - screen made of grass matting and hung round doors in hot weather

kutchery either used for a court or for an administrative office, particularly that of a District Collector; includes treasury.

lathi – heavy bamboo or wooden riot-control sticks.

mali - gardener

Mamlatdar - the officer in executive charge of a taluka, land records keeper of 70 to 80 villages (in the 1950s). There is a sub-treasury in every taluka.

memsahib - lady, from 'madam-sahib'; sometimes shortened to mem

mofussil - up-country; the provinces

naik/ jemadar – the head pattewala, with grander uniform including a turban; Naik for an Assistant Collector, Jemadar for a Collector. His first duty in the morning was to walk ahead of the Collector as the latter made his way from the residential part of the Bungalow to the office: “Saheb, if I don’t go ahead of you, how will anyone know who you are?”).

nilgai - largest Indian antelope; an adult male is thought to look like an ox and so is often called a blue bull

pattewala/ peon - office servant; messenger, (from patta, the sash over the shoulder and across the chest – with a brass buckle worn on a leather belt).

pi dog - mongrel found all over India (abbrev. of pariah)

pukka – proper

PWD - Public Works Department

raj - kingdom, used in twentieth century chiefly to denote British rule in India from 1858 to 1947

sahib/ saheb - sir; European, also affixed to rank, thus 'Collector saheb'

salaam - salutation

sambhur - large Indian deer

satyagraha - civil disobedience on Gandhian principles of non-violence

shabash - well done

shamiana - marquee

shikar - sport (shooting and hunting)

solar topee - heavy pith helmet

Swaraj - Home Rule

tahsildar - local tax collector

taluka - (in South Asia) an administrative district for taxation purposes, typically comprising a number of villages. Each taluka has on an average two or three head clerks (aval karkuns), one each for the office, the treasury, and rounds of village inspection.

tamasha - spectacle

tank - artificial lake

teapoy - small tripod table

verandah - open gallery around bungalow
wallah – man; also as in box-wallah derogatory term for service in a (business) company as opposed to the civil or the armed services. Refers to boxes carried by door-to-door salesmen.

Some of the technical terms in the Administration are as near as I can manage from old hastily pencilled notes made as my father reminisced - when he did reminisce in those last years.....