Word: wallah
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Indian-V. B. Patel, the timber merchant; H. J. Peerani, the baker; Mohanlal, the tailor. In Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland, the Indians are called Banyans, and elsewhere whatever the African wants to buy-a bolt of cotton, a kerosene lamp, a bicycle-it is almost invariably an Indian dukah wallah in a filthy, tin-roofed shop that sells to him. In Kenya, Asians pay one-third of the colony's indirect taxes and run some of Nairobi's smartest shops; in Zanzibar they control the clove market; in Tanganyika they dominate the economy. In Uganda, where before...
...British army lingo of the Far East, "I-Wallah" means intelligence officer. He keeps the books of combat and, as far as possible, tries to make sense of the gruesome gibberish...
Author Campbell puts the story in the mouth of an unnamed, fictionalized I-Wallah, but even the chairbound reader will recognize that every accent has the authentic tone of a man who has seen combat and can still think about it. The commonplace names−John or Bobby or Tommy or Donald−come completely alive, showing men at their best. Dug in among the wild rhododendron bushes, outgunned, outnumbered and outmortared, the West Kents put on a memorable show: at the end it is clear that men can be pitiable even in their finest hour...