Word: pukka
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1930-1939
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Dried, rolled up in drums, sold to middlemen who are noted experts in Oriental extortion, all jute is drawn by bullocks or floated down India's muddy rivers to the colonial city of Calcutta. There it is either bought by British manufacturers or made up for export by pukka ("reliable") balers. Most famed British name in the jute trade is that of Sir David Yule, an extraordinary Scotsman who died in 1928 after making a fortune of $100,000,000 in Calcutta. His dislike of things European relented enough to let him marry an Englishwoman but never to live...
...British journalistic feat probably never before equaled and perhaps never to be surpassed in reversing at the start the biggest news story of the Empire last week. The dispatch contained no particulars of the alleged "enthusiasm" of Indians for the Coronation and this was presumably confined to pukka sahibs in the privacy of their homes. At the Congress sessions last week the Mahatma spoke with his usual mystic benevolence...
Departmental Ditties were dashed off in India and printed by Cub Reporter Kipling himself in spare moments, then sold by postcard solicitation to Pukka Sahibs with an ease which made Salesman Kipling scoff contemptuously in later years when fashionable publishers tried to cry into his ale about the "risks" they say they take. He took his own risks by striking out around the world, landing in California and being turned down by editors all the way across the U. S. and back to England. Then suddenly his work caught on and from a deep trunk crammed with Indian yarns...
...Sing them silent, dance them still and laugh them into an open shame!'' cries The Dreamer. And the Old Woman scorns the impotent Bishop's sister in words that might have come from James Joyce : "Salaam, mem pukka memsahib. en' pardon her, en' pardon me, en' pardon us all for getting in the way of thy greatness; en' grant us grace to have faith in thy dignity en' importance, per benedicte pax hugger muggery ora pro puggery rigmarolum...