The guitarist of the band had, on previous occasion seen me address people with the pronoun ‘Guru‘ which is highly acceptable in the vernacular here as an address for someone whose name you don’t know. It is usually used to refer to someone who is a peer or someone who is a junior. The tone of voice is usually informal, and the switch to vernacular is also accompanied by this very specific manner of speaking, that is highly casual and replete with slang and (subject to the other person’s demeanour) the occasional expletive, usually directed towards the CM or the Governor or Devegowda or Sonia Gandhi or George W Bush or John Abraham (the last one usually in some gym where the other guys lament the fact that he has raised the macho bar by increasing his bicep thickness by a few more inches, and womans all over want this standard size. It will take four of me, not four of my biceps, to make a John bicep).
The other polite ways of addressing someone you don’t know would be ‘Saar‘ and NOT ‘Sir’, and some parallel Hindi equivalents that I have managed to use in their place on different occasions have been ‘bhai-saheb‘, ‘dost‘ or ‘boss‘, when I have pretended not to know the local lingo so that the auto driver can think he has taken me for a ride, and then switching to Kannada later to thump his happiness, and other such politely devious tricks.
Now, the manner in which I have said ‘Guru‘ had made my friend assume that I said it to sound like ‘goRRu‘, rolling the Rs and saying it with a lazy-ish drawl. This made him assume a few things and my retarded manner of pronunciation led to this funny predicament.
Before our first ever practise together as a band, we went to this place in BTM layout to have dinner, and the place was named ‘Ghar ka Khaana‘, which basically to me was an all-you-can-eat vegetarian food fiesta, and given my state of hunger, it was a place I readily agreed to go to with the others.
Midway through our dinner, my friend wants more chappatis. So he says, ‘Gaurav, I need more chappatis‘, and I know for a fact that its been about a fortnight since he moved to this area. Hence I am pleasantly surprised by his people skills, and his ability to make friends with the waiters and be on first name basis with them.
Later on, he asks another guy, ‘Gaurav, thoda paani lao yaar‘, and this time it is a different guy. I keep thinking to myself how funny it is that this place has two guys named Gaurav, and how my friend knows both of them.
A third guy is beckoned for pickles like so – ‘Arrey Gaurav, achaar laa thoda sa‘ and it is about this time that my mind goes into a tizzy, wondering how it is possible that THREE of the waiters can be named Gaurav. My mind starts going nuts, as I keep imagining how I might be getting hard of hearing or how it is that the sole entry criterion for gaining employment at this place is to be named Gaurav!
Now, as it later turns out, I ask my friend why he called ALL of them Gaurav and pat comes the reply – ‘that is because you say that to people all the time!!’ and turns out that our man has mistaken my pronunciation of ‘Guru‘ and has adopted it in his lingo for a month now, calling everyone he knows, including all the Gauravs as ‘Gaurav’.
Quite good fun it is, calling everyone Gaurav now.
AWESOME (can one use rich text to comment)
Hilarious! It is really hard for me to control my laughter in this silent cubicle. Some how I have to laugh out without the voice.
My colleagues might think i am a moron – staring at screen and laughing with himself like some chap from old silent movies (earlier he used to talk himself but now.. tut tut)!