Double Trouble

Chintito

Words can help you go through life and also put you into trouble.

Take for instance the word ‘miss’. I never got to finding out why they call a young lady as well as something you cannot get as ‘miss’. Some pundits have tried to explain the phenomenon as a masculine idea because of the misses being missed. You will have to agree that indeed hits are few and afar. Some ladies even after having their say in the kabin nama prefer, more like prepurr, being prefixed as Miss. It makes them sound younger. It also keeps their husbands on their toes. No wonder most husbands appear taller than their better half.

You will also have to keep on wondering why a shing of goru fame as well as a car’s honk oblique hoot oblique beep are both bracketed as ‘horn’. The games that some ethnic people play with a ferocious bull bulldozing a horde of people down a crowded street makes you wonder why your car could not do just that and call it a game. A car horn has nowadays been reduced to an ineffective acoustic nuisance. Perhaps traffic worldwide is so bad that you literally have to use a cow’s guta to make your way through.

And, of course, the ladies all have a good laugh when they realise that a ‘guy’ is available both in the animal as well as the human world. In fact, one of the favourite pastimes of some womenfolk is to milk their guy of some hard cash. It also calls for research whether it is this milking mutuality that qualifies the two for the common title. Someone (sex concealed on request) keeps on telling me it is the brain that has been made equivalent here, but I dare not write that for fear of backlash from Naro Andolon, an upcoming group that is rising gradually.

We have no hesitation about understanding why the government and family domesticity are both known as ‘home’. There is war afoot in both, and of course in both we are trying continuously for peace and harmony under the continuing threat of conflict from a most improbable cause and quarter. Also in both the matter of resignation is of utmost seriousness and taken only as a very last resort. Even if conditions are teeta one has the inclination to trudge on for fear of what people will say.

You would have observed that often after a police ‘source’ is killed most unfortunately under unnatural circumstances, it is usually revealed that he too had a criminal record. It is not fair because the deceased cannot defend his reputation. Some even refer to them as ‘chores’. It is a matter of mystery how these people, apparently useful, are recruited, how they are compensated and whether the whole thing has any legal basis.

Please pity the guy who instead of calling up the girl took a gold ring to her place the other evening because she had mentioned earlier in the day: ‘Please ring me!’ I always say people should never take matters seriously. That is when the matter actually becomes serious. It did. She slammed the door on his face.

One golfer I am acquainted with never found out why after every time he missed a sitter at a Chittagong golf course, and that was more than twice per hole, his local caddy always swore: ‘Chit’. He could even say, ‘I naw find out’.

Sometimes though the meaning is as clear as broad daylight. A couple in their car were stopped by red lights at a crossing in Dhaka. A beggar approached the lady first and begged, ‘Khalamma, please give me something’. The lady did not make a move. So the beggar went over to the other side and began his routine again but this time he said, ‘Nana, please give me something’. When the lady looked at her husband, her sparkling eyes conveyed, ‘I told you, you should dye your hair’. Needless to say al that the poor beggar got was a big scorn.