Word: sahib
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Aubrey Menen is a half-Irish, half-Hindu satirist who likes nothing better than to undo the mental shoelaces of the English. In The Prevalence of Witches, he spoofed the pukka sahib set in India. In The Backward Bride, he showed a good Sicilian lad in the process of being poisoned by the toxic doctrines of an Oxford freethinker. In his latest novel, Author Menen grafts his wit on another culture, lets his English hero bloom like a quirky Renaissance prince...
...Meaning master. The term, like sahib in India, was once generally used to describe Burma's British overlords. When the British left, almost every self-respecting Burman promptly assumed the title for himself...
...Orwell's days as a British constable in Burma. Orwell had been called out to shoot a tame elephant gone rogue. He did not really want to shoot the beast, but behind him stood a crowd of Burmans ready to jeer if the white man faltered. Since "a sahib has got to act like a sahib," Orwell pumped his bullets in the animal's hide, reflecting "that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom he destroys . . . For it is the condition of his rule that he shall spend his life in trying to impress...
...Send the Man Away." At first, his institute was only a single bungalow. "Our front verandah served as classroom and laboratory, our back verandah as dining room and dairy." But the news of what was done there soon began to spread. The big, smiling "Padre Sahib" had turned barren and eroded acres into rich meadows of wheat. He taught the villagers how to plow and irrigate their crops. He set up a department of agricultural chemistry, and a home economics course for women...
...jammed together to see the show. The Senate Foreign Relations Committee was beginning hearings on the North Atlantic Treaty and Secretary of State Dean Acheson was the first witness. As photographers flashed and popped, they noted that Acheson's mustache had been clipped down from its usual pukka sahib proportions. Finally, Chairman Tom Connally called a halt to their work with a cracker-barrel dictum. "You can snap," rumbled Connally, "but you can't bulb...