If readers of the Book Review have been considering picking up a little conversational Hindi, they would probably do well not to begin with the sample list of words in the Jan. 7 review of “Sacred Games,” a novel by Vikram Chandra that sprinkles untranslated Hindi throughout its English text. Indian readers pointed out that while most of the Hindi terms in the review were innocuous, several were in fact obscene — suitable for Chandra’s tough-guy characters, no doubt, but not for the Book Review, where editors failed to check the meaning of the words in the novel’s glossary. link

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Amardeep, but the gaalis in the NYT review (which were mentioned in siddhartha’s sepia mutiny post) have now gone! Looks like someone finally told the New York Times what they printed! Hee hee. Or maybe Paul Gray just looked at the glossary. (Are the offending words in the glossary?)

Original line (from the post):

So it goes here. Those who plunge into the novel soon find themselves thrashing in a sea of words (“nullah,” “ganwars,” “bigha,” “lodu,” “bhenchod,” “tapori,” “maderchod”) and sentences (“On Maganchand Road the thela-wallahs already had their fruit piled high, and the fishsellers were laying out bangda and bombil and paaplet on their slabs”) unencumbered by italics or explication.

Now:

So it goes here. Those who plunge into the novel soon find themselves thrashing in a sea of words and sentences (“On Maganchand Road the thela-wallahs already had their fruit piled high, and the fishsellers were laying out bangda and bombil and paaplet on their slabs”) unencumbered by italics or explication.

Nice catch Shreeharsh!

My wife actually grew up in Bombay, but she doesn’t know all these galis.

Taporis usually don’t cuss around elders and women. At leat the ones I grew up w/ tried to follow that rule.

I’m kind of curious to see the glossary in the American edition. It will be basically every bad word ever heard of — the language in Chandra’s book is something else!

However, most of the time a lodu is also a dense guy.

means stupid, as well as a dick. just good for nothing, dense guy.

See link http://diggorypress.com/product_info.php?products_id=823&osCsid=4f73537575e23411c54b70fa24375eab

Meet the Author: Vikram Chandra – Sacred Games
Tue 01/16/07 6:30PM Asia Society and Museum 725 Park Avenue at 70th Street $10 Members; $12 Adults; $7 Students with ID Tickets are available by calling 212 517-ASIA or visiting tickets.asiasociety.org

Cosponsored by the South Asian Journalists Association (SAJA).

From the interview: “There’s an energy about the place that is unmistakable and very, very seductive,” Chandra says. “The citizens of Bombay love to complain about the city endlessly, but [they] also will defend it fearlessly against outsiders making the same complaints. As Sartaj puts it at the very end of the book, ‘When you’re away from it, you can miss it, physically you can ache for it — even for the stink of it.’”