Powertoni
” .... “The ministers are ours. The police are in our hands. If anything happens to me, the minister calls”, boasted Sunil. He nodded. “We have powertoni.”
He repeated the word a few times. Sunil had hired a Muslim boy in the Muslim locality for his cable business. “He has twelve brothers and six sisters. I give him money and his brother liquor. He will even beat up his brother for me. I hire him for powertoni.”“
“Powertoni” is a technical term used in Bombay/Mumbai’s political life of the 1990s, perhaps also now, among the circles of the Shiv Sena party. “Powertoni” is a contraction of “power of attorney”, “the awesome ability to act on someone else’s behalf or to have others do your bidding, to sign documents, release wanted criminals, cure illnesses, get people killed. Powertoni: a power that does not originate in yourself; a power that you are holding on someone else’s behalf.”
“Powertoni” is thus described, and vividly illustrated, in Suketu Mehta’s Maximum City: Bombay lost and found, 500 pages that take you through the messy life of a megacity, as entertaining, frightening and confusing as “powertoni” and its rather bewildering definition.
da powertoni und seine arschgeweihmizzi (oder: oaschgweimiazl, wobei das alpine idiom für "geweih" sicher auch rustikaleres zu bieten hätte.)
katatonik (Nov 22, 07:04 pm) #
Holleräduljoh! DJ Ötzi kann schon mal Frührente beantragen! Powertoni tritt ihn mit dem Wanderstiefel in die Lederhosn, dass es kracht! Rididi!
gHack (Nov 22, 08:35 pm) #