The story behind the crying baby!

Aprovincial politico from an area with a historic rock has become the butt of an unusual joke these days, they say.

The joke is seemingly an innocuous question. However, the politico, a close buddy of a heavyweight of a political party in the bud hates those putting this question to him to have fun at his expense. They would ask him: “Baba andanavada?” (Is the baby crying?) There is a story behind this joke.

A woman had been standing at a bus halt carrying a baby in her arms. She had drawn the attention of many others around the bus halt when the child in her arms had started crying unceasingly. Some tuktuk drivers who had become solicitous about the baby which had been crying had told her: “This child appears to be crying because it is hungry.

Why don’t you feed it?”

Then the woman had replied that the baby was not hers. She had said: “A lady asked me to keep the child for a short while and walked away in the direction of that Rest House.”

The tuk-tuk drivers smelling a rat had told this story to some Policemen who had later traced the woman in the company of the provincial politico inside a room at the Rest House.

So, these days, even his close friends would ask the provincial politico: “Baba andanavada?”,

they say.