Neel Mukherjee - The Lives of Others

kirtan= A very Bengali stripe of devotional music in which the songs describe the acts of Krishna’s life. Listening to them uninterruptedly for any length of time requires particular tenacity or strength of character. However, most Tagore songs where the idiom of kirtan is used in the melody are beautiful.

kota= Named after the original home of its manufacture in Rajasthan, this sari has an open weave of alternating cotton and silk threads.

kunjo= A round earthen vessel for storing drinking water.

lakh= Hundred thousand.

lathi= A wooden stick, usually bamboo, used as a weapon.

lungi= Cloth worn by men, wound around the waist, to cover the lower half of the body.

madari= A class of travelling player.

mahajan= Moneylender.

mahua= Madhuca longifolia , a rapidly growing deciduous tree that can attain a height of up to 20 metres. It bears creamy-white flowers in dense clusters through most of April. The flowers are sweet and edible and have a distinctive smell. Pradip Krishen writes in his wonderful Trees of Delhi : ‘Arguably the most valuable of Indian trees because its flowers are a nutritive lifeline for millions of poor people. In season, the succulent flowers fall to the ground just before dawn. Deer, monkeys, wild pig, jackals and bears compete to gather them. A large tree bears up to 300 kg of flowers in a season. They are eaten raw or sun-dried and are distilled into a strong country spirit with a smoky, nutty flavour. . The extremely hard, durable timber has a dark, reddish-brown heartwood, but is seldom used because the tree is too valuable to be felled.’

mairi= A mildly vulgar swear-word.

mallika= Jasminum sambac , also known as Arabian jasmine, and as bel in Bengali. A small, woody shrub that bears small, white, gorgeously perfumed flowers. Like all jasmines, it is powerfully indolic, with that characteristic back-of-the-throat rasp.

manimela= Literally, ‘a fair or gathering of gems’. A kind of informal and local children’s club, with most neighbourhoods boasting a couple, where boys and girls of the area get together in the afternoons, after school, to sing, play, do light drills, practise an instrument, rehearse a play. A bit of a pious and goody-goody kind of outfit with sound intentions — that children don’t fall into bad or idle ways — at its heart.

mantasha= A fitted gold cuff worn unaccompanied around the wrist.

mashima= Aunty. A generic term used to address senior women not known to one. Also commonly used for friends’ mothers.

mastaan= Hooligan.

mela= Fair.

mon(weight) = An old weight measure, anglicised to ‘maund’ in British India. The maund was first standardised in the Bengal Presidency in 1833, where it was set equal to 100 Troy pounds (or 82.28 lb). This standard spread throughout the British Raj. After Independence, one maund became exactly 37.3242 kilograms.

moshai= Mr, but more respectful than that sounds in English. Probably from ‘monsieur’.

muri= Puffed rice.

orre= A more polite (and rather endearing way) of saying ‘Hey, you’, and not only to call someone.

panchali= A melodically simple, droning, sometimes long piece of narrative song in rhyme.

panchphoron= A five-spice mixture unique to Bengali cuisine. It consists of equal amounts of fenugreek, fennel, cumin, nigella and mustard seeds.

panjabi= Bengali word for a kurta — a loose collarless shirt, coming down to just above the knees.

pantua= A type of sweet. Cottage cheese and thickened milk-solids mixed together, flavoured with black cardamom, shaped into patties, deep-fried and finally soaked in sugar syrup. Sublime.

papad= A spiced wafer made out of lentil flour. Usually served fried or, sometimes, grilled/toasted. Inexplicably (and wrongly) called ‘poppadum’ in Britain. Why?

patta= Literally, leaf; in the context used, a piece of paper, title-deed.

pui= A green vegetable, often called Malabar spinach, with waxy, shiny, rounded leaves and smooth stems, both edible. The stems have a slightly viscous texture when cooked. Usually prepared with potatoes and pumpkin and sometimes lifted to another plane by the addition of tiny shrimps. Only obtainable in Bengali homes, it is considered, wrongly, too simple and frugal to be served to guests.

ratanchur= An elaborate ornament that covers the wrist, hand and all five fingers.

sal= Shorea robusta , a hardwood tree that can grow up to 30 metres, with trunks as wide as 2–3 metres. Its broad leaves, when dry, are used to make leaf plates and bowls.

sandesh= Bengal’s signature sweet, made out of sweetened and flavoured ricotta-type cottage cheese. The varieties are legion.

ser(weight) = One-fortieth of a mon(q.v.) or maund. In Raj India it was written as ‘seer’. One ser is just under 1 kg (exactly 933g).

shala= A mild swear-word; it originally implied sexual relations with the addressee’s sister.

shataranchi= A thick woven cotton rug, traditionally of many colours.

shatta= A gambling game, played with cards.

sheel= A large slab of flat stone used as a mortar to grind spices.

shingara= Bengali word for samosa — tetrahedral parcels of pastry, stuffed, most commonly, with a potato filling and deep-fried.

shiuli= Nyctanthes arbor-tristis . A deciduous bush or small tree that bears beautiful clusters of night-blooming, fragrant white flowers. The petals occur at the end of a small, brilliantly orange tube.

shukto= Of the many jewels in the crown of Bengali cuisine, this surely must rank as one of the most prized — a bitter vegetable dish, made with bitter gourd, green papaya, green banana, sweet potato, drumstick (the long, ridged, stick-like fruit of Moringa oleifera ; not chicken) and dried lentil croutons, that usually opens a multi-course meal. It is delicate and subtle and you get it only in Bengali homes.

simul= Bombax ceiba , or red silk cotton, is a glorious deciduous tree, which stands bare in the winter, then explodes into deep-red or coral conflagrations in the springtime, while still leafless: the large flowers have five leathery, fleshy petals. The fruit is a large brown capsule that splits open in the early summer, dispersing masses of white silk cotton along with the seeds.

sindoor= The ‘n’ is nasal. Vermilion powder worn by married Hindu women in the parting of their hair and, sometimes, as a decorative circle, in the centre of their forehead.

sitabhog= A kind of white Bengali sweet. It resembles long-grained rice.

sloka= Verse(s) of prayer.

sraddha= The Hindu religious ceremony that is the culminating point of the obligatory period of mourning after the death of someone in the immediate family. It is supposed to release the soul of the dead to wherever it is that souls go after the last rites have been performed. As always with these things, it involves feeding of the masses.

taal= Rhythm or beat.

tagaa= A kind of ornament for the arm.

tagar= Tabernaemontana divaricata is a pointless, overcultivated, straggly evergreen bush that bears small, white, pinwheel-shaped flowers. In Trees of Delhi , Pradip Krishen calls it ‘a downmarket jasmine’. The description cannot be bettered.