(...Cont. from Oh deer, my dear!)
I swear I had seen that surname somewhere. But the name Indie? Surely it must be a shortened version of the name Indiana. Indiana for a British? Strange. Anyway, I never understood why someone who name a child after a state. Saying that, Malaysia was the most popular newborn girl’s name in the USA last year among the black community. The only association between England and Indiana that I remember was the riddle when I heard as a young adult about where Prince Charles spent his honeymoon! Go figure.
In the modern age, when in doubt, what does a sane person usually do? Google of course. Within a fraction of a second upon typing the surname, the whole anthroponymy of the said name appeared in full glory. Now, it made sense. I could not have guessed.
When she offered vegetarian food for the dinner as she thought we did not consume beef as she thought venison and beef were from same cattle of fish (pardon the pun), I was wondering why she said ‘deer meat’? My usually dull grey cells went into hyperdrive. I thought that perhaps she was one of those true blue Anglophile, who was trying to restore old glory in the English language. She was attempting to restore the language to its glory days before it was corrupted by foreign words from the self-appointed bourgeois societies like the French or the contaminations of the returning members of the British Raj office who boast of the world knowledge through logorrhoea and perceived gibberish.
“Jungle, bungalow, khaki, juggernaut, loot, shampoo. We have our own words,” they said just like any hardliner would say. “And we need no ham, mutton and no venison.” We need to keep our language clean just like our bloodlines!
Well, well, well, I did not know. My little research revealed that the ‘deer meat’ lady is indeed a descendant of whom the British Raj tried to abandon in 1947. Her surname was a dead give away, originating from the cattle rearers clan of the Punjab Valley. Her pale complexion and her pseudo-accent fooled me. For all you know ‘Indie’ could have been an abbreviation if ‘Indira’. Gone were the head bobbing and the singsong intonation of speech. “My, my, Oh righty!” she said in a typically British manner.
The same way Farrokh Bulsara became Freddy Mercury to be blended well into the society to become a British icon.
I was telling myself, “Here are we, two descendants of the Indian subcontinent, one displaced away to another colony and another deciding to snuggle up to the masters trying to outdo each other thinking that is more British and know more English than the other!” Interesting coolie mentality.
I swear I had seen that surname somewhere. But the name Indie? Surely it must be a shortened version of the name Indiana. Indiana for a British? Strange. Anyway, I never understood why someone who name a child after a state. Saying that, Malaysia was the most popular newborn girl’s name in the USA last year among the black community. The only association between England and Indiana that I remember was the riddle when I heard as a young adult about where Prince Charles spent his honeymoon! Go figure.
In the modern age, when in doubt, what does a sane person usually do? Google of course. Within a fraction of a second upon typing the surname, the whole anthroponymy of the said name appeared in full glory. Now, it made sense. I could not have guessed.When she offered vegetarian food for the dinner as she thought we did not consume beef as she thought venison and beef were from same cattle of fish (pardon the pun), I was wondering why she said ‘deer meat’? My usually dull grey cells went into hyperdrive. I thought that perhaps she was one of those true blue Anglophile, who was trying to restore old glory in the English language. She was attempting to restore the language to its glory days before it was corrupted by foreign words from the self-appointed bourgeois societies like the French or the contaminations of the returning members of the British Raj office who boast of the world knowledge through logorrhoea and perceived gibberish.
“Jungle, bungalow, khaki, juggernaut, loot, shampoo. We have our own words,” they said just like any hardliner would say. “And we need no ham, mutton and no venison.” We need to keep our language clean just like our bloodlines!
Well, well, well, I did not know. My little research revealed that the ‘deer meat’ lady is indeed a descendant of whom the British Raj tried to abandon in 1947. Her surname was a dead give away, originating from the cattle rearers clan of the Punjab Valley. Her pale complexion and her pseudo-accent fooled me. For all you know ‘Indie’ could have been an abbreviation if ‘Indira’. Gone were the head bobbing and the singsong intonation of speech. “My, my, Oh righty!” she said in a typically British manner.
The same way Farrokh Bulsara became Freddy Mercury to be blended well into the society to become a British icon.
I was telling myself, “Here are we, two descendants of the Indian subcontinent, one displaced away to another colony and another deciding to snuggle up to the masters trying to outdo each other thinking that is more British and know more English than the other!” Interesting coolie mentality.
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