D K Bose – Demystified
I like to think of myself as a liberal person. But, some things just don’t feel right. Like, having your 6-8 year old girls choreograph a dance to ‘sheila ki jawani’ and the adults will later watch the performance. Even if it is a private party for a few close families. Even if everyone’s daughter is participating. It just doesn’t seem right when your girl is moving and grooving to ‘I’m too sexxxy for you, main tere haath na aani’ (I’m to sexy for you, you won’t be able to get hold of me); especially because they don’t know what it means.
In a similar vein, not consciously, but it just so happens that we don’t listen to anything that is vulgar/not appropriate at home. Imagine my surprise when abu, one day, is singing “bhaag, bhaag, d k bose, d k bose, d k bose, bhaag d k bose” (will be translated soon enough in this anecdote). He was singing it so well, with complete lyrics. That “don’t know whether to laugh or to cry” moment because except for that one play on words, the song is pretty cool. And the other kids in the house were laughing their hearts out while asking for an encore whenever abu went “abhi aaayi yaaaa” (listen to clip below to see what I mean).
And this had become one of those routines for about 4-5 days. I couldn’t say don’t sing this song, lest I’d have to explain why. I didn’t want to bring in extra attention to something not worthy of it either. But ha-ha! If only parenting were so rosy to let it slide. The time came.
abu – mamma, A was saying that ‘bhaag bhaag’ is a bad song. D K Bose is a bad word. No na, mamma? It’s just a guy or girl’s name, right?
me (gulp, think, gulp, think, gulp) – well…yes…it is a name…
(gaining better control) see like when you say “ram, ram, ram, ram” too many times, it sounds like “mara, mara, mara, mara, mara” (Who knew this common silly, joke-type thingy would come in handy as a parenting tool!?) similarly, when you say “D K Bose” together too often it becomes a word which has a very bad meaning. So bad that even adults shouldn’t really be saying it. (I wanted to add, “come to think of it, I don’t think I know why it is bad”, but let that be.)
abu – ok
me … (*phew* that was easy) … I left the room, only to think the song ain’t that bad and the way he sang it, lyrics and all, it was worth encouraging. Here’s hoping I haven’t caused any serious damage to my 9-year-old’s developing brain/IQ/EQ/whatever…
Meanwhile, for your listening pleasure – abu’s version of ‘bhaag bhaag’
The disturbing thing is that some parents make their children dance to such songs for family functions.
I remember Saroj Khan (choreographer) scolding parents of a girl who made her dance on a suggestive song for a children’s dance competition show on TV
Your solution was very smart and just-in-time.
Disturbing, indeed! Good on Saroj Khan, btw. I really don’t understand how it goes on.
Only time will tell how smart and in-time the solution/explanation was.
These songs are indeed disturbing. As parents we can try our best to divert our kids away from them ( last resort being – prohibit from singing that song ). Challenge i have seen is from people ( friends /neighbours /relatives ) around encouraging our kids to gyrate to these songs. Just not sure how to handle such situation.
Yeah. ditto. I actually had a mini-tiff with the friend who was okay with our girls choreographing on sheila. “they are kids, you are giving it more importance” I stayed firm and told the kids not happening because the meaning is adult the meaning of which they don’t know and are not old enough to be told. The thing is I got away this once, how many times can we pick fights? And they do know all these songs without us exposing it to them, right?
That’s a very creative way of solving the ‘problem’. And problem is what we have. And it’s scary. Yes, even I always prided at being liberal, but I think even I draw a line where little girls encouraged to dance to raunchy songs. And kids being exposed to double meaning songs. The latter we don’t even have control over as parents now, unfortunately.
Thanks, asuph. And yes, “scary” is the word. I was at this one-year old’s birthday party the other day, where the puppeteer guy did a puppet dance on “munni” and one of the guests was so enthused that he made the host play “munni” again so all the kids would have a great time dancing. The host was so uncomfortable, luckily the guest wasn’t encouraged by anyone, including the kids and thus “munni” didn’t become badnaam after all…this once.
Manushi said “looking at it from another perspective, we should be thankful he is not singing “pan-chure” from the same movie!”
@Anand there’s always a silver lining, isn’t there?