Brush up on your crime lingo before you watch VICE’s latest series ‘क Se Crime’- The VICE Guide to Crime in India
While the internet seems to be loaded with countless options to binge watch, VICE India has given us an intriguing six-episode crime thriller ‘क Se Crime’, now streaming on VICE.com. Each episode explains different aspects of crime persistent in different parts of Uttar Pradesh. To keep true to the region in focus, the entire series has been created in a vernacular format, as local as it gets. Keeping that in mind, we present the ‘क Se Crime’ dictionary.
Here's presenting a few words from the VICE dictionary aka 'shabdkosh', that will definitely get you started on your ‘क Se Crime’ experience:
1. क (K) Se Katta - A 'country-made gun', made from scrap metal in small workshops, usually firing a single bullet at a time. These are made to be disposable and are notorious for being unreliable and prone to misfiring. A katta is a cheap alternative to more expensive guns for street-level criminals.
2. औ (Au) Se Auzaar - Means ‘tools’ and in the context of this series is used to describe the weapons and guns the criminals in UP use.
3. श (Sh) Se Sheeter - From the phrase 'History-Sheeter', someone who has a History Sheet in their local police station. This file has a complete criminal history of a person and is circulated to all police stations in an area to help keep a track of active criminals.
4. त (T) Se Tamancha - A proper factory-made handgun, as opposed to a workshop-made Katta. All types of guns are heavily controlled by the India government, so criminals tend to smuggle in weaponry from outside the country for their use.
5. भ (Bh) Se Bhaukaal - Originally meaning ‘fear’, colloquially used to describe the feeling of reverential awe and respect inspired through a mixture of swagger and intimidation.
6. त (T) Se Tender - To pick a contractor for any government infrastructure or maintenance work, the government asks contractors to 'tender a bid' for a contract. The lowest bidder usually gets the contract, but criminal gangs find ways to get around this through intimidation and violence. Colloquially, the application form through which one bids for a contract is called a 'tender.
7. त (T) Se Tubelight - Old UP street slang for AK-47 assault rifles. These code words are used to throw police surveillance off their trail, and are frequently changed to stay ahead of police informants.
VICE India's first ever crime documentary ‘क Se Crime’ is now running on its fifth episode with the last episode set to release on Friday.
You can watch all the videos here: https://video.vice.com/en_in/
