Words by Farrukh Dhondy

I was in a charity shop a few weeks back and I stumbled across a book called Words by Farrukh Dondhy. I recognised the name from wayback. When I trained as a teacher (yes, I trained as an English teacher many moons ago). I remember a book of short stories for young people he had back then (Come to Mecca). Anyway this little book was right up my street. A rambling sort of book, it consists of a series of musings on words and their meanings with special reference to the Indian subcontinent where Mr Dhondy lived before coming to England to study Kipling and so on. If I tell you that he has worked for Channel 4 you will nt be surprised to hear that he lets himself down badly on the language front at a certain points, which is a shame. The core of the book, however, is full of interest. There were several areas where my understanding of the whole matter advanced (for example I was aware that bungalow is Indian but I had not connected it to the word Bengali). A good find.