anil bathaaal...!

hello,

this little episode goes back nearly thirty years when sunkan's daughter priya was just about eighteen months. her lisping in tamil and bengali was a treat
and everybody felt they had to say something to her just to get her to retort and get a lispy reply. she kept neighbours, relatives and new aquaintances
equally interested in her way of speaking.
one day we had been shopping and since it was pretty late we decided to return home for food. we had decided to eat out and there was nothing ready. it
was raining and eating out with so much baggage was not possible.. so we decided to take the bread and jam and a little vegetable that was there in the
fridge . no other go we just have to heat up the vegetable and eat bread.!
priya loved bread . so there was no problem perhaps we could give some bread with milk and honey.
returning home we found the milk overturned by who else the great milk lover ...our neighbours cat..!
and there were no milk packets or late night milk suppliers in those days..
we tried giving her bread and some vegetables. she was patiently waiting till we served her. good girl we said.
all of a sudden she started crying. we decided she must be very hungry and dinner was late so tried feeding her. her wails were audible but we could not
understand what she wanted.. anil bathaaal.....we quicly went through the list of things she lisped...ha we sure could have done with a dictionary of lispings
then., but no way and she went on crying that she wanted `anil bathaaal''
and whatever was it.?. looked like some vikram vethaal from the famous vikramaditya stories.. do i make some new item for her. perhaps some rice or
chappathi as usual. but she wouldnt stop wailing..no amount of cajoling or trying to force feed her helped.. it was a trying day and i had a good mind to
give her a slap. but what help would it be ... perhaps she will wail more and the night will be a nightmare... we took her out onto the terrace luckily the rain
had stopped and there was a full moon shining and she was happy to listen to the stupid trail of story we said with whatever came to mind.. ate one or
two morsels of what we gave her only the vegetables and she will have nothing to do with bread.. we decided that she must have decided to hate bread
from that day...!
we soon forgot all about it and priya was her usual self. we also joked... whenever we wanted to say something nobody can understand we simply said
anil bathaal. and had a good laugh..!
it was almost a month or so, and father had come home.. he wanted to leave in a hurry and said just sandwiches will do ....we made priya sit on the
table and i quickly took some bread and spread some butter on the bread.. i added some jam too...priya was excited...! she tried getting up and was all
eyes with glee.. i was wondering whats making her so happy? i was in a hurry too to give the sandwich to father. she cried `anil bathaal...oh no not again i
thought but this time she was happy and grabbing the sandwich from me...so anil bathaal was really amul butter....!

sathya

hi satya,

Cute one...utterly butterly delicious....

Dear Sathya,

That was nice...... My son enjoyes bread with baathal & Jathal..... (Butter & Jam)...

Kids are always great and enjoyable...... Hope u have lot more sweet memories...

Veda

Sweet reminiscence, Sathya.

Sweet memories,Sathya.

Thanks for sharing. definetly special memories. and very cute.lol.

Oh Satya, at last you deciphered. Good one. Thanks for sharing.