Fluttering pages on an overloaded desk of musty
files,stirred from their decade long slumber by the occasional intrusion by the
air lazily waving around the room from a ceiling fan,bringing a breath of fresh air on a
balmy sweaty afternoon.
Thumb curved back to wipe the bead of sweat racing down the
sideburns which have lovingly embraced the oil in sheeny glory. afternoon sun
twinkling off the gloss from hair that
still has channels drawn through it from the single toothed comb,run through it
with precision in the morning.
Head bent over exhausted by the three flight trek back from
a three hour lunch,bent in hunt for support from the desk, seeking a platform
to launch its siesta.And dream of the evening tea.That is the image I evoke
when I hear “babu”
A clerical position of subservience coming down from the
raj,having morphed over a
period of time from efficient diary keepers to matinee
samosa dreamers.
It is also a word that I have heard echoed in whispered
phone calls to distant loves,an endearment,a declaration of closeness,aSealing
of fate,a sign that babu to bahu is just a difference of an alphabet.
How and why it crept into the romantic parlance?a bellwether for endearments?is anyone’s guess,mine
is that the word has slipped in to the conversations in disguise hiding under
the rotund OO instead of the cirque.evolving the word to baboo.
Having just returned from a popular blockbuster Hindi
movie,where the heroine trills up a “hello
baboo….” in a phone conversation with her best friend in the climactic scene
got me thinking,how authentic,so realistic.
That’s before getting home and drinking water I realized
(for effect: glass still tilted to take in more water) that one of my drivers
to work is also in a habit of calling everyone baboo,sitting in a cab early in the morning and to be called that.urggggggh!!!!
Without having to think too hard ,Another example of my
encounter, is a colleague who if she has to correct you, will slowly shake her
perfumed head in shattered disappointment, just tilting it so, as to not
displace the hair from her bun and open her address with a disappointed na na baboo,now that can either now be
an open ended statement left hanging to be completed with the head shaking
effect or sometimes maybe a whole dialogue is suffixed with extra head wagging
for pronounced effect.
So am I to assume that the word has been taken on by the Diaspora willingly,or an epidemic?
a virus that has been filtered down and left to run amok fueled now it seems
by popular cinema?? a word that transmutes between romantic and non romantic.so widespread in its virulence that it sometimes slips out unnoticed.
The meaning is just
not as simple as a darling. So I can obviously not take offence for something
which does not have a laid down definition and is vaguely floating around in
the pond of words infecting random people. Its in a transitional phase and has
yet not found acceptance in the oxford dictionary, just having found attention
in my meandering writing.
Have I ever had a babu phase?I thankfully shudderingly
so,have not,but then neither have I gone through the honey puss,sugar buns
phase,hmmmm however I do come with a sickeningly rich smattering of sweethearts
and sweetie pies.and a quirk,do read on.
If I call you by a name that is not Ramakrishnan Pillai Subrahmaniam Aiyyar…a name that was lovingly weighed on you by your parents, I
shall call you depending on my fondness for you, with a name that either I conjure up,
preferably(increasing your status in my list of approval) or just tagged along
because of general pet name
popularity. I do not sit and agonize on these names they just roll out.Individualizing
the person on my radar, scanning them into the ‘close’ category.Maybe some of
those names rattle people, like baboo
does to me,do feel free to discuss our interactive address with me, its subject
to change.
What do I have against this word babu? What got me thinking
thus??Nothing!!Just imprinted images of the musty balmy room refuse to leave my mind's living room where they come out and lounge on hearing the command from the 'ear'ly yours.
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