After reading my post about the shandy, Sheetal asked me where I had come across the word, and whether it is really a legitimate one. I assured her that it was, and that bandy was a more recent Anglo Indianism that wouldn’t have made it to the dictionaries. Imagine my surprise when I could find neither in any of my dictionaries! To make it worse, Hobson Jobson lists bandy, but makes no mention of shandy! So, I went on a hunt to buy a dictionary that has the definition of shandy I want. I have been unsuccessful till now. I also realised how woefully inadequate the dictionary section of Landmark is.

What is surprising is that to me, shandy has always been a pretty common term – I have come across it being used fairly commonly when I was in school and college (in Coimbatore) and when I was in the University (in erstwhile Madras). Even a couple of weeks ago, we were discussing a shandy as part of a book Vidya and I are helping to publish.

I remember that there was one edition of the Oxford dictionary that had a separate section for words of Indian origin. I couldn’t find that dictionary, nor could I find the definition I was looking for.

Online, my searches have been fruitless. Though there have been a couple of references to shandy with the definition I want, there isn’t anywhere a description of a shandy. Indeed, the only one that has a description is my own blog entry!

And so the search goes on – when the shandy is found, I shall write another account!