Covid antakshari

In the pre-Covid era, whenever we went on an excursion, as soon as the bus started to move, the university students began antakshari, as if they had no recourse to any other form of higher entertainment. A bespectacled classmate among them would plead, “why antakshari right away? Can’t we wait till we finish our lunch or reach a water-hole?” The over-enthusiastic self-styled leader would overrule the objection of the serious type and start making groups. In every group, some individuals knew more songs than others. They are the ones who emerged victorious at the end, conquering their rivals, thanks to their phenomenal memory, which stores for them ’a million melodies’ to recall at will from different time zones, including both male and female singers.

But given the dismal, difficult and exhaustive mood of the present, my friends, Vasanth Kumar Thimakapur and his namesake and prolific singer, Vasanth Kumar H L, decided to overcome nostalgia and play a different game away from antakshari. I sensed that they seemed to be bent on catching up with the current vocabulary. So, I set the ball rolling with my first phrase, ‘Covid appropriate behaviour.’ Thimakapur was quick to respond, ‘standard operative procedure.’ Singer Vasanth didn’t bat his eyelid to supply his share, ‘personal protective equipment.’

The subsequent rounds rolled on like a well-oiled machine since the three of us are more or less up to date with current affairs. One of us said, ’50 persons for marriage,’ the next one said, ’20 people for funeral.’ Rejuvenating his Keats - ‘heard melodies are sweet,’ Thimakapur quipped, ‘herd immunity.’ Providing a perfect rhyme, singer Vasanth contributed, ‘community immunity.’ I remembered ‘vaccine hesitancy,’ the reply was ‘vaccine diplomacy.’ Now it was the turn of my two friends to indulge in a bit of jugalbandi. Was it Thimakapur who said ‘do gaz ki doori’? His rival uttered, ‘davayi bhi, kadayi bhi.’

Enjoying the ping-pong exchange of Covid phrases, I took the role of a referee, unobtrusively leaving them in the ring. They resumed: ‘oxygen audit,’ ‘fire audit,’ ‘Covid suraksha,’ ‘Covid protocol,’ ‘night curfew,’ ‘containment zone,’ ‘teeka utsav’ and ‘transmission trajectory.’

They would have gone on and on, but I decided to ring the closing bell as their repertoire seemed to be inexhaustible. “Gentlemen, thank you for participating in this enlivening game. Once the Coronavirus subsides, we will meet to socialise and update our vocabulary in the post-pandemic world. This lingo will stay with us. It has already become a part of our life. Let’s have lemon water now and disperse.”