In public life we come
across a very large number of people ,
but some of them remain etched deep in memory , either due to their peculiar
habits or the words that they frequently and repeatedly use and utter , day in and
day out , sometimes even out of the context.
In my service career spanning exactly thirty five years , I have also come across such types and am
amused to think of them . I
started my career in a Commercial Bank and during the seven odd years I spent
there, had two or three such colleagues. A colleague, with leadership qualities ingrained in him,
in conversation frequently used
the word ‘Karamchari ‘ so much so that he came to be addressed as ‘Karamchari’ , his real name relegated to the background. Another colleague who’s takia qalaam was ‘I
don’t
bother ‘ , soon saw himself being called ‘ bother mull ’ . When an officer named Moksh
joined , someone suggested that perhaps he had mis-spelt his name
, which should have been Mukesh . When I
said that the name Moksh was correct and the word meant ‘salvation ‘,
the name ‘Mr.Salvation’ got stuck to him.
Later when I joined Government
service, such instances appeared again. In
my tenure at Pooh in tribal district of
Kinnaur, I found that an official was referred
to as “Matung” .It transpired
that the official was a teetotaler and
once in a gathering , when a drink was offered , he said ‘matungse’
meaning- I donot drink. But the word got stuck as his nickname.A maternal uncle of
mine came to be referred to as ‘
Na Ji
Na’ as this was the phrase he
repeatedly used. A service colleague of my father was
known as ‘Bhai ji ‘ due to
frequent use of this word by him while
addressing others. One can add on and on
,though these are some glaring
examples.
