Kolaveri is Tamil for ‘murderous rage’. That perhaps explains why the song ‘Why this Kolaveri Di…!’ from south is such a rage nowadays in this land way up north. You see it gives expression to everybody’s wonder at this rage about a particular alphabet!
And this is how it all started… Daroga ji was in deep sleep on this particular morning and was enjoying a particularly lovely dream. Now dreams as we all know tend to be ridiculously disjointed reality shows with incongruities thrown in for extra measure. In his dream Daroga ji, having arrested the last of the stonepelters, was being awarded for restoring peace on earth. He wondered which eminent personality was going to bestow the honour… the chief perhaps or may be even the minister… but then as he reached the venue of the award ceremony he saw that it was President Obama himself who stood there wearing a pheran! A man standing nearby said in a loud whisper to someone, ‘He is getting the Nobel’. Daroga ji’s chest swelled with pride. He reached the podium and Obama, who wasn’t Obama any longer but Daroga ji’s long dead school headmaster, reached out towards him and patted his cheek. “I thought you were dead!” Daroga ji said. The headmaster laughed and said, “Aren’t we all?” He picked up a medal from the nearby table but as he tried to pin it to Daroga ji’s chest somebody started to shake Daroga ji. Daroga ji struggled hard to steady himself but the shaking was so vigorous that the medal slipped from the headmaster’s hand and fell to the ground… and Daroga ji woke up!
He was being shaken by his son who was shouting in his ear, “Baba your picture is in my book!” Daroga ji still in a dream-hangover state muttered, “It must be because of the Nobel prize…” The tiny tot thrust his Urdu primer under Daroga ji’s nose. One look at the picture and Daroga ji (who was wide awake by this time) got into a Kolaveri, i.e., murderous rage. Not only was the picture quite unflattering but it also portrayed him as a tyrant. To add insult to injury the medal was missing! He hurriedly dressed and, slipping the primer with the offending alphabet into his pants, left for the Kotwali. While on his way he kicked not less than 20 pedestrians and shook his fist at many more but his Kolaveri showed no signs of abating.
As he reached the Kotwali he found his junior waiting impatiently for him. The junior had this love-struck maiden in his neighborhood and on this particular morning the said lady’s passion had finally burst out into a song. One look at the junior as he was leaving for the Kotwali, and she belted out the classic lyrics about the tyranny of love and the beloved, “Zulmi piya, bada bedardi…” The junior took instant notice of the word Zulmi (a variation, albeit romantic, of Zaalim or tyrant!) and got into a Kolaveri. Hearing the episode Daroga ji’s Kolaveri hit the roof and he summoned the ‘culprits’ responsible for the seditious primer (and subsequent fall-outs like the Zulmi song!) to the Kotwali.
The ‘culprits’ tried to explain that whereas since times immemorial the letter Z had stood for Zaeef, i.e., a feeble man, in view of the authorities being fond of talking about empowering the common man it was decided to start the empowerment process with the Z-equivalent of the Urdu alphabet. Power corrupts and might being right, Z for Zaeef became Z for Zaalim! However at the Kotwali the ‘culprits’ were… er… firmly convinced that this empowerment of the Z-equivalent amounted to an act against the state. The status of Z for Zaeef was sought to be restored but that raised some unforeseen difficulties. The whole thing, having received wide publicity, had come to the notice of the Americans who immediately protested that since Z for Zaeef is likely to remind people of Mulla Zaeef of Taliban fame especially with the picture of a bearded man alongside, this amounted to talibanization of education! So there was no going back to Z for Zaeef either.
After much brainstorming a consensus was reached that the picture of the bearded old man in the old primer and Daroga ji’s likeness in the controversial new one would be replaced by that of a fool and Z would henceforth stand for Zaeef-ul-Aql, i.e., feeble-minded. This was acceptable to all because in this part of the world the authorities believe the common man to be feeble-minded, the common man takes the authorities as feeble-minded; while most of the separatists include both, and the rest of the world (watching the events of the last two decades!) includes all, in this Z-category. Meanwhile the common man in his innocent ignorance continues to wonder as to why all this rage about ‘Z for whatever’ and that’s why everybody is singing, ‘Why this Kolaveri… Kolaveri… Kolaveri Di?!’
( Truth is mostly unpalatable… but truth cannot be ignored! Here we serve the truth, seasoned with salt and pepper and a dash of sauce (iness!))
And this is how it all started… Daroga ji was in deep sleep on this particular morning and was enjoying a particularly lovely dream. Now dreams as we all know tend to be ridiculously disjointed reality shows with incongruities thrown in for extra measure. In his dream Daroga ji, having arrested the last of the stonepelters, was being awarded for restoring peace on earth. He wondered which eminent personality was going to bestow the honour… the chief perhaps or may be even the minister… but then as he reached the venue of the award ceremony he saw that it was President Obama himself who stood there wearing a pheran! A man standing nearby said in a loud whisper to someone, ‘He is getting the Nobel’. Daroga ji’s chest swelled with pride. He reached the podium and Obama, who wasn’t Obama any longer but Daroga ji’s long dead school headmaster, reached out towards him and patted his cheek. “I thought you were dead!” Daroga ji said. The headmaster laughed and said, “Aren’t we all?” He picked up a medal from the nearby table but as he tried to pin it to Daroga ji’s chest somebody started to shake Daroga ji. Daroga ji struggled hard to steady himself but the shaking was so vigorous that the medal slipped from the headmaster’s hand and fell to the ground… and Daroga ji woke up!
He was being shaken by his son who was shouting in his ear, “Baba your picture is in my book!” Daroga ji still in a dream-hangover state muttered, “It must be because of the Nobel prize…” The tiny tot thrust his Urdu primer under Daroga ji’s nose. One look at the picture and Daroga ji (who was wide awake by this time) got into a Kolaveri, i.e., murderous rage. Not only was the picture quite unflattering but it also portrayed him as a tyrant. To add insult to injury the medal was missing! He hurriedly dressed and, slipping the primer with the offending alphabet into his pants, left for the Kotwali. While on his way he kicked not less than 20 pedestrians and shook his fist at many more but his Kolaveri showed no signs of abating.
As he reached the Kotwali he found his junior waiting impatiently for him. The junior had this love-struck maiden in his neighborhood and on this particular morning the said lady’s passion had finally burst out into a song. One look at the junior as he was leaving for the Kotwali, and she belted out the classic lyrics about the tyranny of love and the beloved, “Zulmi piya, bada bedardi…” The junior took instant notice of the word Zulmi (a variation, albeit romantic, of Zaalim or tyrant!) and got into a Kolaveri. Hearing the episode Daroga ji’s Kolaveri hit the roof and he summoned the ‘culprits’ responsible for the seditious primer (and subsequent fall-outs like the Zulmi song!) to the Kotwali.
The ‘culprits’ tried to explain that whereas since times immemorial the letter Z had stood for Zaeef, i.e., a feeble man, in view of the authorities being fond of talking about empowering the common man it was decided to start the empowerment process with the Z-equivalent of the Urdu alphabet. Power corrupts and might being right, Z for Zaeef became Z for Zaalim! However at the Kotwali the ‘culprits’ were… er… firmly convinced that this empowerment of the Z-equivalent amounted to an act against the state. The status of Z for Zaeef was sought to be restored but that raised some unforeseen difficulties. The whole thing, having received wide publicity, had come to the notice of the Americans who immediately protested that since Z for Zaeef is likely to remind people of Mulla Zaeef of Taliban fame especially with the picture of a bearded man alongside, this amounted to talibanization of education! So there was no going back to Z for Zaeef either.
After much brainstorming a consensus was reached that the picture of the bearded old man in the old primer and Daroga ji’s likeness in the controversial new one would be replaced by that of a fool and Z would henceforth stand for Zaeef-ul-Aql, i.e., feeble-minded. This was acceptable to all because in this part of the world the authorities believe the common man to be feeble-minded, the common man takes the authorities as feeble-minded; while most of the separatists include both, and the rest of the world (watching the events of the last two decades!) includes all, in this Z-category. Meanwhile the common man in his innocent ignorance continues to wonder as to why all this rage about ‘Z for whatever’ and that’s why everybody is singing, ‘Why this Kolaveri… Kolaveri… Kolaveri Di?!’
( Truth is mostly unpalatable… but truth cannot be ignored! Here we serve the truth, seasoned with salt and pepper and a dash of sauce (iness!))
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