The Kiplings and India: A Collection of Writings from British India, 1870-1900

Gymkhana

(Hindustani) A club usually reserved for English residents in a given Indian city. Hobson-Jobson defines it as follows: "It is applied to a place of public resort at a station, where the needful facilities for athletics and games of sorts are provided, including (when that was in fashion) a skating-rink, a lawn tennis ground, and so forth. The gym may have been simply a corruption of gend shaped by gymnastics, [of which the English public school short form gym passed into Anglo-Indian jargon]. The word is also applied to a meeting for such sports; and in this sense it has travelled already as far as Malta, and has since become common among Englishmen abroad" (Hobson-Jobson 408)

This page has paths:

Contents of this tag: