Slender Loris and Punny Animal Names

I think one of my cousins ( a very young fellow) looks like a Slender Loris, and refer to him by that name. Unfortunately, I can’t make the nickname official because of a punny reason.

The Kannada word for Slender Loris is “Kaadupaapa” which is supposed to mean “baby of the forest” or some such thing. The problem arises with the word “Kaadu” which can refer to both forest and as “troublesome”. I suppose the reason for these diverse meanings is some sort of root meaning “wild”.

So Kaadupaapa can also mean “troublesome baby”. There’s more to it. “Kaadupaapa” also happens to be a fairly common abuse that is directed at young kids when they get too troublesome. I clearly remember my mother abusing me using this phrase a few times when I was small. So nicknaming a young boy as Kaadupaapa would be similar to some guy in IIT being given a nickname such as “bastard” or “chutiya”. And clearly the parents of the kid will not approve and the baptist will end up getting a bad name in their eyes.

This unfortunate combination of circumstances means that I can’t make official what I think is a splendid nickname. At least, in IIT I didn’t have to bother about what the parents of the boys would think about the nicknames that I’d dole out, which enabled me to dish out a few decent ones. Though I admit that a conspiracy by the institute to deny freshies to Narmada Hostel meant that there weren’t too many people I could have named.