This used to be such a commonly used word back in school. To do anything you needed josh. To do anything well, you needed “full josh”. You would suddenly “get josh” to do something. And when you didn’t want to do something you’d say “josh illa” (back in school, I hardly spoke English. Used to be mostly Kannada – this was till 10th standard).
There was this friend who was hitting on a girl in the junior batch. And on every saturday, he would wait for her to come out of class to take one glimpse of her before he went home. He would say he needed to “get josh” from her. And if he didn’t see her before he left for home on saturday, he wouldn’t have enough josh to last the weekend.
There were other ways to get josh. Listening to songs from David Dhawan-Govinda movies was one way. Towards the end of school came Upendra with A – again immensely josh-giving. Everything we did, every activity we planned, had the intention of maximizing our josh inflow. Wonderful times those.
This word faded away from my lexicon when i found it not being used much in IITM. IITese however had the common word “enthu” which I realized was reasonably similar to josh – basically it was similar enough to josh that I didn’t have enough of an incentive to establish josh in IITese. And I switched. Of course there was no exact match – for example, just having a glimpse of that special someone was usually not enough to give you enthu, nor would Tan Tana Tan TanTan Tara help.
Again doing something with “full josh” wasn’t the same as doing that with “full enthu”. You could “put enthu” for something but you “needed josh” to do it.
Of late I’ve been trying to revive josh. I find myself instinctively using the word when I think it is appropriate. I’m trying to distinguish between josh and enthu, and use the one that is more appropriate. It is not easy of course – had it been, I’d’ve made an effort ot establish josh in IITese.
And now, thinking about it, I realize that there was a good chance that this blog might have been residing on some “no josh da” or “josh illa maga” website. But again – josh is not exactly the same as enthu.