OF SILHOUETTE AND TAXES

'Silhouette' (pronounced sɪlʊˈɛt) was the answer to a word puzzle posed in a WhatsApp group that I am a member of. As you know, it is the image of a person (animal, object or scene) represented as a solid shape of a single colour, usually black, with its edges matching the outline of the subject.

The word looked to be of French origin and I was intrigued. The findings of my 'research' were fascinating. First of all, it is an eponymous word, that is, derived from the name of a person (as in Boswellian biography or Dickensian character) or thing (as in Himalayan blunder). It comes from the name of Etienne de Silhouette who the minister for finance in the 18th century France.

De Silhouette, born in 1709 was a scholar in finance and economics. He had spent a year in London learning about the economy of Britain. When appointed France's Controller-General of Finance in 1759, he had the unviable task cut out for him: of balancing a precarious economy. He had to curb France's spiralling deficit and strengthen the finances for the Seven Years' War against Britain.

In the Ancien Régime, the nobility and the church were exempt from taxes. In his attempt to restore the kingdom's finances, he took a leaf out of the English method of taxing the rich and privileged. He devised the "general subvention," i.e., taxes on external signs of wealth (doors and windows, farms, luxury goods, servants, profits). He also managed to curtail Royal household expenditure. De Silhouette introduced new taxes and reduced state pensions. He took the war measure of ordering the melting down of goldware and silverware.

These steps made him hugely unpopular. He was criticized by the nobility including Voltaire, who thought his measures, though theoretically beneficial, were not suitable for wartime and the French political situation.

Suffice it to say that nobody - the royalty, the clergy, the nobility or the commoner - was happy with the the steps he took for setting the economy right. It was therefore hardly surprising that his term was very short: a mere eight months.

But what does all this have to do with the style of pictures named after him? Good question. The draconian steps that De Silhouette took caused him to become the subject of hostility. His penny-pinching manner led to the expression à la Silhouette (like Silhouette) to be applied to things perceived as cheap or austere.

An art form that gained popularity during this period was a shadow profile cut from black paper. It provided a simple and inexpensive alternative for those who could not afford more decorative and expensive forms of portraiture, such as painting or sculpture. Those who considered it cheap attached the word "silhouette" to it.

That is how this art-form, still popular, came to acquire the name silhouette.

 A HAIR OF THE DOG THAT BIT ME

In one of my recent posts, I had used the expression 'a hair of the dog that bit me' which intrigued some friends. I was surprised because I had thought it was a popular phrase.

So I tested it on five other persons; only two knew what it stood for. That was a revelation to me. Therefore I thought that this expression (and a few others) could be the subject of a post.

"Hair of the dog that bit you", or "Hair of the dog" for short is a colloquial expression for the cure of a hangover from the over-indulgence of the previous night. It is actually a small measure of the same drink, consumed with the aim of lessening the effects of a hangover. Something like homeopathy (Similia similibus curantur) or vaccines.

But where do the dog and its hair come from? The expression originally referred to the popular belief that a few hairs from the tail of the dog that bit you applied to the wound will prevent evil consequences!

By rights, the exclamation "What the Dickens!" to express surprise, shock of befuddlement should be an open-and-shut case: a tribute to Charles Dickens, right? The master story-teller whose plots have suspense-filled twists and this expression of real-life shock and surprise must surely be related, one concludes.

Except that they are not connected! Well, it is quoted by William Shakespeare in The Merry Wives of Windsor, where Mrs. Page says , "I cannot tell what the dickens his name is ..." And that great wordsmith had walked this earth centuries before Charles Dickens came with his stories of Victorian London.

Suppose I am struggling with a puzzle: In what ratio should coffee beans costing Rs 360 per kg and chicory costing Rs 200 a kg mixed to produce a mixture costing Rs 300 a kg? As I juggle with algebra: x kg of coffee, y kg of chicory and x + y kg of the mixture, you tell me that "You can work it out in your mind, it is 5 : 3!" When I ask you how, you tell me: (300 - 200) : (360 - 300) or 100 : 60 or 5 : 3 and add, "Bob's your uncle!" That is the same as "Voila!" or "Hey presto!"

That reminds me of my classmate Habibullah who used to say that the letters "q e d" that one writes with a flourish after proving a rider in geometry stand for "quite easily done"! (Of course, the abbreviation actually stands for "quod erat demonstrandum" meaning "which was required to be proved".) "Quite easily done" is the same as "And Bob's your uncle!"

Euphemism is a great breeding ground for expressions like "spending a penny" - for going to the toilet. The phrase goes back to Victorian public toilets, which required users to insert a single penny in order to operate the lock. Historically, only women's public toilets required a penny to lock; the ones for men were free of charge! Of course, there are other expressions for the same thing: "going to the little girl's room", "going to powder the nose" and "going to a man about the dog" and the like.

The reference in "Oh my Gideon!", I had thought, was to the copy of the Bible you see in hotel rooms. In a moment of stress, you may like to exclaim "Oh my God!" but it would be sacrilege, as God has, vide the Third Commandment, made his feelings plain on the subject of taking his name in vain. So one looks for alternatives like "Gosh" and "Golly" but there is hardly any fun in that. We need something more colourful, descriptive and dramatic. We’re all creative people, and language is our playground. "Sainted aunt" is more like it. Or "Oh my giddy aunt!" Which, in course of time, transmogrified into "Oh my Gideon!"

When you hear "Alice has a bun in the oven", it is easy to guess that what is meant is that she is expecting a child. If someone has "a few sandwiches short of a picnic", the suggestion is that he is not too intelligent.

There is one more that I want to write about. Someone who is boorish and loud, and a little too full of himself is described as "a stuffed shirt" or "all mouth and trousers". This windbag is boastful about being the most astonishing person around.

Meanwhile, there’s “all mouth and NO trousers,” referring to someone who cannot deliver what he boastfully promises. Apparently when it originated, the claim referred to sexual prowess!

 AVOSKA

My father had started his career in the 1940s as a telegraphist. In those pre-war days, a bicycle was a luxury. The proud owner of a Hercules bicycle, he would go to work riding it. He always had a cloth bag on the carrier of the bicycle. On days he forgot the bag, he would call out to one of us to fetch it.

On many days, when he returned from work, there would be nothing in the bag, but he insisted on carrying one whenever he ventured out, wherever he went. One day when going to work, he realised he didn't have the bag and asked me to get it. While handing it over, I asked him why he needed the bag if it had to come  back empty. He said, "Just in case."

Now I know what he meant. Those were the early years after India had attained independence and shortages were rampant. Forget victuals, even old newspaper to wrap groceries in was in short supply. (The present generation may not believe, but coarse cloth used to be distributed through ration shops. When I try recycling or upcycling stuff - like using the 'other side' of the cash memos from shops for noting down things to buy, my children comment "Hangover of scarcity") So keep a bag handy because if you found something (and had the money to purchase it), you could carry home the trophy! 

Why am I speaking of this today? Because I came across the word "avoska". Yes, you guessed it right: it is a Russian word. The literal meaning of the word is "perhaps" but is used for referring to a light and transparent shopping bag made of closely-knit cords. Think of it as a basketball net with its bottom closed. Sometimes they have a cloth base.

It would easily fit in a lady’s handbag and could be unfolded in a grocery store. When most things were hard to come by and there were shortages of essentials, the avoska was a kind of scoop-net. People took it with them in the morning just in case, they might catch a certain goody by the end of the day. Just in case.