33
So perhaps Lieutenant Lalitbahadur didn’t just wound the Hercules
but perhaps also helped to alter the history of how Sukarno was ousted
from power.
The account above is how I recall these momentous events. The only
official record is contained in the daily sitreps submitted by the Intelli-
gence Officer, to the Brigade headquarters. C Company only features
with a fairly blunt entry in these sitreps, which are now included in the
regimental records in the Gurkha Museum at Winchester. But this is
my story on the ground – or in the air!
Major S Dewan, BEM, [1976 – 94] recounts some:
Gurkha Expressions, Sayings and Slangs
I have often wondered where some of the colloquial expressions and
sayings used in daily conversation all over the Gurkhali-speaking
world came from? For instance, if the CSM says
‘hukum ko jawab chaina’
it simply means that an ‘order is not appealable, just do it!’. Likewise,
an expression
‘tu thu’
means all encompassing, a
‘high hukum’
order
from the top level requiring everyone or everything on parade, literally
a three-line whip. I assume there are many more unique ones but here
I have selected only the best-known sayings that call to mind or those
that you may well have used yourself and (hopefully) for others to en-
joy. I might say at the end of the reading all this you would be
au fait
with some of the innate, behind-the-lines, Gurkha soldiering!
In the barrack rooms, you will often hear the
gurujis
say
‘hukum mannu,
khutta tannu’
which means “just do as told and keep out of trouble”.
Another well used phrase is ‘
paltan ko kam, kahile jancha gham’
roughly
translates to “army work is like watching a clock - it’s just a case of: go
here, go there, do this, do that”.
‘Dhal me kala’
is a phrase used to sus-
pect something fishy is afoot with sardonic referral to particles in
Kalo
Dhal
(black lentil) in Hindustani. The words
‘chhakka-panja’
or
‘char say
bish’
are widely used numerical term for cheating or dishonesty. If
somebody is acting pretentiously or creating a false impression you call
them
‘jhuta harkat’
. The expression
‘noon ko sojho’
(true to the salt taken)
is to describe a very honest and reliable soldier
.
To be
‘gayal hajir’
is
to
