Verboten

Word of the day: Perfuse. verb. Suffuse. Diffuse. Cause to spread or flush or flood through, over, or across. For some reason this word's been perfusing through my brain in the last few days/nights. Has a nice ring to it, like perplex or persnickety or perdition, damn it.

Pretentious word of the day: Mofussil. noun and adjective. Described by the Hobson Jobson dictionary (which happens to be an extensive glossary of Anglo-Indian terms) as, ""The provinces," - the country stations and districts, as contra-distinguished from 'the Presidency'; or, relatively, the rural localities of a district as contra-distinguished from the sudder or chief station, which is the residence of the district authorities. Thus if, in Calcutta, one talks of the Mofussil, he means anywhere in Bengal out of Calcutta..."

Most likely to be used by: film school types, painters, neo-surrealists - or anyone who uses the term art deco thrice in a sentence without drawing breath - and, of course, Bengalis. Or all of the above at once. 'Eminent' writer Amit Chaudhari uses the word, not once, but thrice in an article published in The Hindu in which he reviews a Bengali writer's stories titled, In the Company of Ghosts. Maybe he wants to be three times cleverer than the average Bong (slang for Bengali, not a smoking implement). Maybe if he uses the word one more time I'm going to send him into the company of ghosts.

But don't be fooled, the South Indians don't like to be left behind when it comes to pretentiousness. Thus, the Chennai Mofussil Bus Terminus (CMBT) is the largest bus station in all of South Asia. And how do they justify such linguistic genius? Because how else, you see, can they get people to travel through and beyond Chennai, the Gateway to South India. And beyond. Let's all take the Moffie Magic Bus, maaan. How cool and unfettered we be, in a moffie sort of way. How typically posh, we of the Meandering Let’s-use-the-word-Mofussil-now Movement.