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...Autocrat of the Breakfast Table
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Our Autocrat's list of dandies includes Aristotle, Mark Antony, Sir Humphrey Davy, Lord Palmerston, Beau Brummel and Lord Byron.
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"...Dandies are not good for much, but they are good for something. They invent or keep in circulation those conversational blank checks or counters just spoken of, which intellectual capitalists may sometimes find it worth their while to borrow of them. They are useful, too, in keeping up the standard of dress, which, but for them, would deteriorate, and become, what some old fools would have it, a matter of convenience, and not of taste and art. Yes, I like dandies well enough, - on one condition.
-What is that, Sir? - said the divinity-student.
-That they have pluck. I find that lies at the bottom of all true dandyism..."
...Autocrat of the Breakfast Table
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Our Autocrat's list of dandies includes Aristotle, Mark Antony, Sir Humphrey Davy, Lord Palmerston, Beau Brummel and Lord Byron.
Wiki also has Noel Coward, Benjamin Disraeli and Oscar Wilde among many others.
Other close aliters for Dandy are Fop and Dude.
RKN's Headmaster-Father was accused to be a fop by his ex-classmate, after they both retired. And Dude is a word I heard from my son when he was at IIT KGP...that is the equivalent of Hero, I guess...I don't know...none called me a Dude.
My choice for the most lovable dandy in literature is PGW's Psmith. He is impeccably dressed, lean and handsome, exceedingly articulate, full of pluck and is poor...he mentions that the exquisite fall of his trousers is because their pockets are empty.
Jawaharlal Nehru was quite a dandy alright. His dress carries his name...Jawahar Coat or Nehru Jacket...and a Jawahar Rose pinned on it. He had pluck like none else...ask JFK who himself was no less a dandy.
I don't think there is a precise antonym of dandy. Those who are not dandies are just the rest of us.
When I landed at IIT KGP in 1965, I made a lot of friends in our Faculty Hostel. One of them, Tyagi, did his B.Tech from KGP itself and so was an authority on the jargon then flourishing in the UG Halls.
He told me that all students those days were divided into two broad groups:
1. Guys
2. Ghoonks
I could understand 'guy' alright since it was a familiar English word but not 'ghoonk'...I searched all the dictionaries at hand and failed to locate it or a similar word in English. I asked him about it and he said he didn't know and didn't care...they all understood what they meant by a ghoonk...it is the antonym of their 'guy'.
Apparently guys were like dandies. They dressed well, talked fluent Hindi or English, had a way with words and girls, socially adept, full of fun and laughter, were into games and sports and music (loud), held Hall and Gymkhana posts and were fashionable. There was never a doubt about their IQ since they cleared the toughest competitive exam in the world (according to them). But they didn't wear their grades on their sleeves...they knew that they would get the best of managerial jobs the nation had to offer.
I had quite a few of them in my B Tech classes...they were likely to be Singhanias, Mittals, Malhotras, and such surnames that were all knew to me.
They exuded high spirits in a quiet style and it was a pleasure to see them in the classroom.
On the other hand I could place some of the extreme ghoonks alright.
They dressed sloppily, wore glasses with high-power lenses, goody goody in their studies, didn't look interested in anything but their studies and marks, scored high grades invariably, talked little and meekly, shy to the core, inept socially, didn't take to extra-acads easily...but often ended up with prizes and awards and went to graduate studies abroad.
I think ghoonks then were close to geeks nowadays.
Tyagi was quite a guy alright...all ladies loved him.
In our Physics faculty there was only one dandy (guy) then...Bidhan Mahanty. He was dressed in the latest fashion, his shoes were model Chinese, he talked and talked, made friends with both sexes in the campus and oozed opulence. He was well-read and had the pluck to talk of PGW in his Interview with the Director, taught well and without fear, and rose to be a Professor at a young age...and, unlike us ghoonks, he left his cozy teaching job for more challenging pastures.
The greatest ghoonk among the senior faulty was my own Ph D Guide, SDM. You should have seen him...but, to the best of my knowledge, he has the distinction of being the only one amongst us to have a Wiki Page all for himself...created by a guy at Boston now.
I was a ghoonk alright...I avoided all possible social events. And had only four or five shirts and fewer pants to wear at any point of time. Never had a suit. Nor a tie except a borrowed one for a few days during the Science Congress in 1970 when I was at the Reception and Registration Counter. Bidhan Mahanty gave me one of his and taught me how to tie it...a high science which I promptly forgot.
But one notch above me was my roommate DB...who was immersed in his Group Theory and Teaching. He once showed me his anonymous student-feedback forms from the II Year B Tech batch he was teaching. They were all giving him super-excellent grades and one of them made, in addition, an 'humble request':
"Sir should change his shirt at least once a fortnight"
The other day, his daughter (at Cal) and I (at Hyderabad) were reminiscing about it heartily on phone...
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