The Interactions

So, as usual Lord Jagnnath with his elder brother Balabhadra and sister Subhadra has gone on his annual vacation to his garden palace on the countryside. This festival of ours which is celebrated with great pomp and show is probably one of the most awaited one by those who participate in the festivities and, of course, by those who enjoy a leisurely holiday thanks to Lord Jagannath (Though, why has Lord Jagannath not sanctioned a holiday, for some of us is something that I want an answer for? We are equally happy that he’s gone on his annual holidays!)

Well, the Rath yatra went offpeacefully and the colourful Chariot, decorated magnificently,mesmerized the devotees all over. This brings to my mind one word that entered the English Language through India and is especially connected to this event. The splendor with which the Indians rejoiced all their festivals always left poor British chewing their nails.  The Rathyatra was also an occasion that left them spellbound and in a state of shock; they were astounded to see such a huge chariot of Lord Jagannath in Puri.

They were even more shocked when during the procession some people were accidentally crushed, to their amazement they found out that the chariot of the Lord cannot be stopped and thus a new word was coined. As the British could not pronounce the Sanskrit word ‘Jagannath’, it becameJuggernaut-- the meaning of which was “A force which cannot be stopped”.           

The interactions between the British and the native Indians always resulted in comedy of errors and new English words emerged from these hilarious exchanges. One of these interactions occurred when the British saw the fishermen on the Madras Coast tie four long tree trunks with a rope and sailing off into the sea. Impressed with the simplicity of the idea, they asked, ‘what was the craft called?’ but the simple ‘Tambi’ (brother) who used the tree trunks to fish did not know of the name. He, merely, said that he had ‘Katte’ (which in Tamil means‘tied with a rope’) ‘Maran’ (tree).The British, of course, misunderstood and thought ‘catamaran’was the name of the raft, and today in English ‘catamaran’ means a fast slim raft. Although, I doubt, if today they are made out of tree trunks!

More, Hindi words found themselves mutilated and accepted in English.One of them was “Vilayati”; Indian soldiers would call the British soldiers ‘Vilayati’ i.e. a person from England or a foreigner;eventually, England became synonymous with Vilayat and the ‘Englishmen’ with ‘vilayati’. As usual, the British pronounced the Hindi word ‘Vilayati’ in a funny way and it became ‘blighty’. With time, ‘blighty’ became a part of English dictionary and came to be recognized as a synonym of ‘foreigner’.