The New Dictionary

Every now and then, a dictionary needs updating. New words or phrases are created while others acquire a new meaning or are viewed in a different context. Then there are those affected by vernacular distortions. For those into linguistic pursuits, here’s the new, improved dictionary -- use it at your peril.

Ban-ana Republic: It refers to a nanny government that believes the best way to create an ideal society is to ban everything that is tasteless, like beef in Maharashtra, cuss words in Bollywood movies, BBC documentaries and more recently, anything that induces heat, like Maggi noodles and porn sites. The porn ban covers 857 sites and points to the government’s new thrust area, the B-spot, as it were. It basically suggests that the Kama Sutra has no historical standing, or sitting, or kneeling, or any position at all---that is the government’s position.

Thulla: After Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal used the word ‘Thulla’ to describe Delhi police, he has copped a lot of flak, apart from adding a new meaning to ‘beat constable’. For the benefit of south Indians who have been scanning their out-of-date dictionaries, it is a derogatory north Indian phrase used to describe corrupt cops. Delhi’s police commissioner was not amused, and neither was one offended constable who slapped a criminal defamation suit against the CM. Arresting developments, for sure.

Hindu Terror: Bollywood has produced its share of villains--Mogambo and Co--but the BJP says that in real life, there’s no connection between a Hindu and terror, a contradiction in terms according to Rajnath Singh. That has been contradicted by the Congress, which officially gave birth to the phrase in the UPA reign and says it will not allow it to be expunged. At the moment, the phrase is like an IED planted in Parliamentary proceedings.

Hanging fire: This is another version of a hung expression, the people who came under fire after expressing their views on Yakub Memon’s hanging. They included the usual suspect, Shashi Tharoor, who was hung out to dry for taking a stand in contravention of the party line, and also Shotgun Sinha, who also attracted his party’s ire for signing a mercy petition for the condemned prisoner. It’s a reminder that Indian politics is all about ‘herd mentality’, in other words you can be seen but not heard.

Potential terrorists: The conventional wisdom has it that these are young people who can easily be radicalized by false propaganda. Not so. The learned Governor of Tripura, a certain Tathagata Roy, has educated us into what constitutes a potential terrorist; mourners at a funeral. He tweeted this during Yakub Memom’s funeral advising intelligence agencies to keep track of those gathered to pay their last respects, suggesting that their next stop could be the nearest ISIS recruiting centre. His next stop should be the nearest exit.

Clean chit: The literal translation would be a sanitized letter but it’s become such an overused phrase that it has started to lose its meaning. A panel set up by one court gives a judge of another court a clean chit in a sexual harassment case, one state gives Maggi a clean chit, but two minutes later, another state bans it. Of course, there’s also the squeaky clean chit given to Sushma Swaraj, Vasundhara Raje and Shivraj Singh Chauhan. At this rate, we will be running out of chits.

Acche Din: A phrase that has been in and out of the new dictionary, depending on who is using it and the time reference. When Narendra Modi first used it, it came across as a sexy campaign slogan, promising paradise in a mere five years. Maybe he’s found a short cut, or so we believed till Amit Shah set the record straight, moving the goalposts to 25 years. The phrase has now been aroused again thanks to the ban on porn sites, with one member of the twitteratti complaining that, forget acche din, now there would be no acche raat either!