Slumdog ...

True story!

Happy Diwali!

Angeblich sah Indien in der letzten Nacht aus dem Weltraum so wie auf diesem Bild aus, das ebenso angeblich die NASA gemacht hat.
Anyway: खुश दीवाली!

Sea of Poppies

Wer diesen Text versteht und ihn freundlicherweise in den Kommentaren übersetzt postet ist ein Held!

"The old Raja of Rashkali: I could tell you a story or two about him - Rascally-Roger I used to call him! [...] Now there was a lordly nigger if ever you saw one! Best kind of native - kept himself busy with his shrub and his nautch-girls and his tumashers. Wasn't a man in town who could put on a burra-khana like he did. Sheeshmull blazing with shammers and candles. Paltans of bearers and khidmutgars. Demijohns of French loll-shrub and carboys of iced simkin. And the karibat! In the old days the Rascally bobachee-connah was the best in the city. No fear of pishpash and cobbily-mash at the Rascally table. The dumbpokes and pillaus were good enough, but we old hands, we'd wait for the curry of cockup and the chitchky of pollock-saug. Oh he set a rankin table I can tell you - and mind you, supper was just the start: the real tumasher came later, in the nautch-connah. Now there was another chuck-muck sight for you! Rows of cursies for the sahibs lighting their Sumatra buncuses. Cunchunees whirling and tickytaw boys beating their tobblers. Oh, that old loocher knew how to put on a nautch all right! He was a sly little shaytan too, the Rascally Roger: if he saw you eyening one of the pootlies, he'd send around a khidmutgar, bobbing and bowing, the picture of innocence. People would think you'd eaten too many jelybees and needed to be shown to the cacatorium. But instead of the tottee-connah, off you'd go to a little hidden kumra, there to puckrow your dashy. Not a memsahib present any the wiser - and there you were, with your gobber in a cunchunee's nether whiskers, getting yourself a nice little taste of blackberry bush. [...] Oh they were grand old goll-mauls, those Rascally burra-khanas! No better place to get your tatters tickled."

Ghosh, Amitav: "Sea of Poppies", London 2008, S.49f.