creamy layer
n.— «Though the benefits have never been so freely accessible to all “SCs” as some in India often imagine, neither are they so confined to “a creamy layer” already risen to the top from amongst the Scheduled Caste mass, as radical critics of the system content.» —“‘Untouchable’: What is in a Name?” by Simon Charsley Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute Mar., 1996. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
It’s hard to imagine now, but there was a time when people disagreed over the best word to use when answering the phone. Alexander Graham Bell suggested answering with ahoy! but Thomas Edison was partial to hello! A fascinating new book about...
Shuba in Sammamish, Washington, grew up in India, where she heard speakers of Indian English refer to an eggplant as a brinjal. She assumed that this was a British English term, but later realized that in Britain, this vegetable is called an...