All my bindaas desis, both words just made the dictionary of record for the Queen’s English. U-S-S-A-A! This is the giant dictionary every would-bee spelling prince and princess lugged around as their sole form of exercise. It was the only one which had all the words in it, and at $50, nine inches thick and 30 lbs, it was a sizeable investment.

On Wednesday, the Oxford Dictionary of English… revealed its new cache of linguistic treasures, including ‘bindaas’, ‘tamasha’, ‘ mehndi’, ‘desi’ and ‘lehnga’. Lollywood… finds honorable mention. So does ‘kitty party’, the chaat-and-chatter mainstay of bored Indian housewives for decades.

It even includes feather-to-dot crossover:

The dictionary’s co-editor Catherine Soanes told TOI she was particularly pleased to have been able to include the Indianism ‘tom-tom‘, defined by the ODE as “verb (chiefly Indian) proclaim or boast about.” [Link]

The Statesman points out words still missing (hello, Mumbaikars? Bindaas sans jhakaas?)

“What’s your good name?”… “Let’s go have some chai-vai” (tea, obviously, with snacks thrown in) or, “There’s a lot of this fighting-witing happening here every day…” A proud mother announcing to all and sundry about her ladli beti getting “cent per cent” (meaning 100 per cent) marks in math or an executive having to “prepone” his meeting… “business-baazi” or “cheating-giri…” “freak out…” In Kolkata, “enthu” replacing enthusiasm is old hat as also “sentu” for sentimental… “Funda” for fundamental, “intro” or “appo” for appointment are freely used… “Tux” has no relation with the tuxedo — who wears it in our country, anyway? — but with a baldie which must have originated with the Hindi word “taklu”… “timepass” for whiling away the hours… “hawala” (illegal financial dealings), “badla” (revenge) or “eve-teasing”… [Link]

And those already added:

India-origin words have dotted the English language for a long time. Words like bungalow, cashmere (from Kashmîr), cheetah, coolie, cot, cummerbund, cushy (from the Hindi khush), dinghy, dungaree, juggernaut (from Lord Jagannath’s huge rath-yatra, perhaps?) jungle, khaki (dusty), loot, punch (the drink made from paanch or five ingredients), pajamas, shawl, verandah, etc. In the latest Oxford English Dictionary, words like Angrez (Englishman) and Badmash have already figured. Earlier, it had added adda, bundh, dal puri, bandobast, chutney, bandana, chamcha (aren’t we familiar with them!) neta and dhaba. [Link]

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Nwo thye wnat ot renmae Delhi (via PPP):

The Indian capital should be renamed Dehli to correct a 150-year-old mistake, according to historians in India. They have launched a campaign to correct the “mis-spelling”, which they say happened during British rule because the colonialists could not pronounce Hindi names.

K M L Misra, a former head of history at Agra College, said: “For 800 years Delhi was called Dehli but the British couldn’t manage the breathy sound of Hindi and the spelling of the city later came to reflect this.”

I presume the city would be called Newer Dehli. It isn’t a new idea:

What the British knew as Cawnpore is now Kanpur, the northern city of Muttra is Mathura, and the Ganges is known once more as Ganga… In 1995, Bombay became Mumbai after pressure from Hindu-nationalists to reinstate the original Marathi name. Contrary to popular belief, this was not a corruption of the British name but almost certainly derives from the Portuguese Bom Bahia, meaning Good Bay.

A year later, the southern city of Madras – possibly a corruption of the Portuguese Madre di Dios – reverted to Chennai, the name that had been used by Tamils throughout the British period. Then, in 2000, the spelling of Calcutta was officially changed to Kolkata after pressure from the Communist state government to revert to a spelling that more closely reflected the Bangla pronunciation.

I’ve got no fondness for badly Anglicized names. Even old New York was once Nieuw Amsterdam. But the new name wouldn’t be entirely accurate either:

… even Dehli was a corrupted word. The pre-Mughal name was Dilli, which was derived from Dhillika, a Rajput name for the area which dates back to the 8th century.

I have the rename to trump all renames: let’s call everything Gondwanaland. It’s an Indian name after all. Problem solved.

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Perhaps the Tamil Tigers are showing their cuddly face (thanks, Abhi):

Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar was shot in the head Friday night just outside his private residence in Colombo and died an hour later after emergency surgery… The assassination is bound to further strain the shaky cease-fire agreement between Sri Lanka’s government and the Tamil Tiger rebels. The truce, in place since February 2002, has been threatened by recent violence and the suspension of talks in 2003. [Link]

Earlier this month, two LTTE members were arrested outside Kadirgamar’s official residence — about a kilometer away from where he was shot — after conducting surveillance and videotaping the area. Kadirgamar had just returned to his private residence late Friday for a swim, after attending a function for the release of his new book, police said. As he walked toward the house from the pool, a sniper fired three shots, striking him in the head and chest. [Link]

… Kadirgamar, 73, who is from the ethnic Tamil minority and a close aide of President Chandrika Kumaratunga, was taken to the National Hospital for emergency surgery after being shot in the head… Kadirgamar, a Tamil Christian, led an international campaign to ban the Tigers as a terrorist organization. [Link]

Kadirgamar’s background:

He was educated at Trinity College, Kandy, and obtained a Bachelor of Laws… from the University of Ceylon… He also has a B.Lit. from Oxford University. He practiced law at the Ceylon Bar and in London until 1974, when he became a consultant to the International Labour Organization in Geneva.

Kadirgamar is a long-time supporter of the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP)… Despite being himself a Tamil, he strongly supported the Bandaranaike government’s policy of not negotiating with the Tamil Tigers insurgents in northern Sri Lanka. [Link]