Taking off from my Pradesh encounter, know that, when I am speaking of some phenomenon occurring in some backwater, stool-hole corner of the world, I refer to that area as “Bagwanistan”.
Of course, folks who have followed events in South West Asia might recognize names such as Pakistan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, or Kyrgyzstan. None of them are teeming metropolises, centers of industry, or commercial powerhouses.
Bagwan is derived from the Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh, who was founder of Rajneeshpuram, near Antelope Oregon. This was a religious community, steeped in controversy.
Connect them, in a neologism, and you have a “word” to depict someplace in the suburbs of nowhere, rooted in tribalism and not modern in any way.
So, when in conversation about world affairs at my workplace, I commonly reference Bagwanistan as the site of this or that tumult, or the origin of some undocumented soul presently on Immigration’s radar.
All that was to relate how, the other day, one of my partners, a clever young man, educated and thoughtful, asked me where Bagwanistan was located?
He was genuinely surprised when I informed him it was across the county from Brigadoon, which did not exist either.
Musings of A Stretcher Ape 