Pappu pass ho gaya!
By Rajbir Deswal
We may now laugh it off, but as kids, if anyone rubbed us the wrong way, even if unintentionally, we reacted the way we did because those were the days of innate innocence. Later, maturity robbed us of that innocence and made us less prone to impish impulsiveness. Colloquially, we call it ‘chhed’ or someone’s weak spot for poking fun at. A happy-pack of six brothers and sisters, each one of us had his/her anathema, which triggered instant and reflexive retort.
Well, my eldest sister, now 62, had a favourite song—Meri tasveer lekar kya karoge tum. When the song went on air, we rushed to her with the transistor, to pamper her and win her silky smile. And we knew she had a near crush on Manoj Kumar, a fact she is willing to lap up even today, grinning ear to ear.
Sister number two was always conscious of her well-chiseled long nose. Once while travelling on a train, a fellow passenger and a tribal woman said it abundantly loud, “Look this girl has a beautiful, pointed nose!” Reaching home, she made us all repeat umpteen times what ‘that’ tribal woman said in the compartment.
Sister number three in the series did much of lisping and would pronounce words dragging them smoothly but sweetly, when she was just a kid. Once when the deputy commissioner visited our village, she announced it to my grandmother, “Aye ree majee, dee-chee aa rhya chai!”
The mere mention of dee-chee made her frown in reaction then, but now, she flashes a pleasant smile. Her gait resembled that of my mother and we still ask her to walk just six steps in the room to reconstruct a scene, now lost for long. The ‘chhed’ makes her happy a great deal.
Two sisters, younger to me, had a bigger share of pokes from all of us seniors, and obviously so. You could never force anything on one of them who was someone with a free will. If she was pampered, she could do any or all of your biddings, but not otherwise. She could not withstand cold weather.
Once in the month of June, she was found nowhere in the house. While everybody was worried, she lay cozily under a heap of quilts! We then began making fun of her, calling her ‘doom’, a tribe known to keep themselves under wraps even in scorching summers.
Now, there was a time when biscuits were made ‘right in front of our eyes’ with pure ghee, milk, sugar and flour sent to the bakery from home. Once while standing under a mounted shelf, the youngest of us all, hardly a two-year-old then, was looking up, her hands raised in prayer, in letting her being handed over the biscuit container: ‘Hey Ram, peepa patra de!’ Oh, she has been blushing at the very mention of that day ever since!
If, by now, you’re thinking my siblings spared me, then, well, that’s not the case. I have two of my favourites amongst the many: One, that if someone showed me a packet gone oily, as if there were sweetmeats in that, I would jump to grab it. But my lower lip protruded and tears trickled down my eyes on knowing of the prank played on me!
Two, if they wanted me to do a thing, they needed to tell me not do it. For instance, a ‘Don’t pick your nose Pappu!’—yes, that’s my nickname—met with a ‘I will’. And my finger would drift to my nose.
Well, the latest chhed of me is ‘Pappu pass ho gaya!’
By Rajbir Deswal
We may now laugh it off, but as kids, if anyone rubbed us the wrong way, even if unintentionally, we reacted the way we did because those were the days of innate innocence. Later, maturity robbed us of that innocence and made us less prone to impish impulsiveness. Colloquially, we call it ‘chhed’ or someone’s weak spot for poking fun at. A happy-pack of six brothers and sisters, each one of us had his/her anathema, which triggered instant and reflexive retort.
Well, my eldest sister, now 62, had a favourite song—Meri tasveer lekar kya karoge tum. When the song went on air, we rushed to her with the transistor, to pamper her and win her silky smile. And we knew she had a near crush on Manoj Kumar, a fact she is willing to lap up even today, grinning ear to ear.
Sister number two was always conscious of her well-chiseled long nose. Once while travelling on a train, a fellow passenger and a tribal woman said it abundantly loud, “Look this girl has a beautiful, pointed nose!” Reaching home, she made us all repeat umpteen times what ‘that’ tribal woman said in the compartment.
Sister number three in the series did much of lisping and would pronounce words dragging them smoothly but sweetly, when she was just a kid. Once when the deputy commissioner visited our village, she announced it to my grandmother, “Aye ree majee, dee-chee aa rhya chai!”
The mere mention of dee-chee made her frown in reaction then, but now, she flashes a pleasant smile. Her gait resembled that of my mother and we still ask her to walk just six steps in the room to reconstruct a scene, now lost for long. The ‘chhed’ makes her happy a great deal.
Two sisters, younger to me, had a bigger share of pokes from all of us seniors, and obviously so. You could never force anything on one of them who was someone with a free will. If she was pampered, she could do any or all of your biddings, but not otherwise. She could not withstand cold weather.
Once in the month of June, she was found nowhere in the house. While everybody was worried, she lay cozily under a heap of quilts! We then began making fun of her, calling her ‘doom’, a tribe known to keep themselves under wraps even in scorching summers.
Now, there was a time when biscuits were made ‘right in front of our eyes’ with pure ghee, milk, sugar and flour sent to the bakery from home. Once while standing under a mounted shelf, the youngest of us all, hardly a two-year-old then, was looking up, her hands raised in prayer, in letting her being handed over the biscuit container: ‘Hey Ram, peepa patra de!’ Oh, she has been blushing at the very mention of that day ever since!
If, by now, you’re thinking my siblings spared me, then, well, that’s not the case. I have two of my favourites amongst the many: One, that if someone showed me a packet gone oily, as if there were sweetmeats in that, I would jump to grab it. But my lower lip protruded and tears trickled down my eyes on knowing of the prank played on me!
Two, if they wanted me to do a thing, they needed to tell me not do it. For instance, a ‘Don’t pick your nose Pappu!’—yes, that’s my nickname—met with a ‘I will’. And my finger would drift to my nose.
Well, the latest chhed of me is ‘Pappu pass ho gaya!’
