Don't forget, the OP is ploughing through Burmese Days by George Orwell, a fact usually omitted by the OP. That is where the quote is from.
In the days of the British Raj in India (Burma was administered as an outpost of that), the expat Brits, colonial administrators, military, police, business people and their families, and so on, used a number of local words in everyday conversation, both with locals and each other.
The character described is said to be a "memsahib", itself one of these words (it means something like "white boss lady") and she is unflatteringly described - "yellow and thin, scandalmongering over cocktails, making kit-kit with the servants, living twenty years in the country without learning a word of the language".
The word "kitkit" was more commonly written without a hyphen and as used by Raj people meant "nagging" and the implication here is that Mrs Lackersteen used to nag her servants. Ill-treatment of servants was common, and these words of advice were included in the 1919 edition of a guide for new British recruits into the Indian colonial police (such as Orwell was) called "Police Notes" by G. G. B. Iver (a police officer)
Quote:In the management of servants I can only say don't nag at them, and try to keep your hands off them. When you have to inflict a fine don't retain the money but send the man with it to the nearest charitable institution which is run by his own sect, or to a hospital. Let him take the money with a letter and bring a receipt. The servants are often very trying -and very faithless — a man who has been with you 20 years will leave at a few hour's notice — but in times of sickness, etc., they generally play up very well, and in camp they will march night after night in the bitter cold without complaint, pack up again the next evening and so on for weeks. On the whole we owe a great deal to our servants, and l am convinced that they will respond far more readily to decent treatment. Let me quote from the Anglo-Indian classic " Behind the Bungalow," which sums up the Indian servant completely. — " The conditions he values seem to be, — permanence, respectful treatment, immunity from kicks and cuffs and from abuse, especially in his own tongue, and above all, a quiet, life, without kitkit, which may be vulgarly translated, nagging. Ill-usage of him is a luxury like any other, paid for by those who enjoy it, not to be had otherwise."
1. Police Notes by GGB Iver
http://booksnow2.scholarsportal.info/ebooks/oca4/47/inindiandistrict00iver/inindiandistrict00iver_djvu.txt
2. Behind the Bungalow by Edward Hamilton Aitken
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7953
Selected Answer
Stumble It!
Tweet This
Bookmark on Delicious
Share on Facebook
Share on MySpace