Half a century ago, when I was in PU at a College, a Chemistry lecturer used to coin and use his own idioms. Surprising that some of them are now used worldwide!
For instance, I then had a full head of curly hair and liked to comb it such that a few curled locks used to keep swinging; this was in the style of Tamil heroes of those days! Once in his class when it happened too often, he shouted at me saying: “Cut out that carefully careless style of combing from tomorrow; you are disturbing me”!
(It is a different matter that I am 90 per cent bald now)! My elder brother and his friend, three years my senior, used to “cut” classes regularly; when they chose to attend, he used to call them by their roll numbers and say “8506 and 8528; you are regularly irregular and punctually unpunctual. Get out of my class”.
A few years later I joined the Indian Military Academy. There were many tough physical exercises and tests as also academic subjects and you were graded from a mere pass to first class or excellent. If you failed in even one of them you were sure to get relegated to the next course. That is the time, I coined the idiom: “There is many a slip, between the shoulder and the pip”!
As a newly-married Captain in Deolali, I was allotted a small one bedroom accommodation! Within two days, my brother in law from Calcutta landed up, with two friends! He was shocked at our living condition! I told him not to worry, as we army-people knew how to “live from box to body”!
Once soon after marriage in 1968, my wife and I had a minor argument about which picture to see and she called me MCP in jest. Though not thought of earlier, the word “FLB” came out of my mouth. In two seconds, she realised what it meant: “Female Liberalist B”; we both rolled out laughing! Amazing that it is used derogatorily, worldwide now!
Years later I settled in Bangalore and a friend came home. While talking about some mutual friends, he called them “Coconut Cousins”! I caught on; he meant Keralites! Thereafter we created: “Thayir-vadai Cousins (Tamils); Coffee Cousins (Coorgs); Bisi Bele Cousins (Kannadigas) etc! If you coin or come across any such new idioms, do tell me!
