The story behind the crying baby!

A provincial 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 tuk-tuk 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.