Word: baksheesh
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...shocked by conditions he saw in India: the opium dens of Calcutta, the wandering lepers crying "Baksheesh," the filth and poverty of the villages. "I learned that one meal a day was all the majority of the people could count on . . . In those villages it took no effort...
Housecleaning. A woman's work (and a Communist's) is never done. Ana has a lot of new worries. One is what Rumania's former masters, the Turks, called baksheesh. Said one Rumanian when the Reds took power: "The only honest government Rumania can have is one that has been in power long enough to give everyone a chance to fill his pockets. It's only after a Rumanian official has made enough money through graft to buy a house, educate his children, and keep a mistress or two, that he feels he can afford...
...Communist Party, less than 2,000 strong before the war, has swelled to 500,000. Many of the nouveau Reds simply wanted their go at baksheesh. Until recently the new regime sold exit visas for $5,000 to $10,000. Officials and just plain Communists crowded the mountain resorts, gambling millions of lei at the casinos...
Oldtime Party Leader Lucretiu Patra-scanu was ousted from the Ministry of Justice and jailed, along with his wife, a few months ago. There is no question of baksheesh in his case. His sin is in wanting a Communist Rumania for the Rumanian, rather than the Russian, Communists...
...Farewell. The travelers moved on via gay Shanghai (where, after celebrating, Perelman next day could swallow nothing but "a little clear broth made of Angostura, lemon peel, and bourbon"), the Malay States, and Ceylon. "The last we saw of India . . . was a wizened beggar signaling us frantically for baksheesh. When none was forthcoming, he threw aside his servile manner and, bounding beside our porthole, dynamically thumbed his nose at us until we outdistanced him. It was a touching, and somehow an apt, symbol of the amity between our two great nations...