Published with permission from Penguin Random House India.
Rushdie, Salman. “Hobson-Jobson,” Imaginary Homelands: Essays and Criticism, 1981-1991, Granta House, London and Penguin Books, 1991, pp. 81-83.
Image: The 1903 edition of Hobson-Jobson: a glossary of colloquial Anglo-Indian words and phrases, and of kindred terms, etymological, historical, geographical and discursive by Henry Yule and AC Burnell, edited by William Crooke.