Boketto and Bohni

The Japanese (Arigato gozaimas, citizens of the Land of the Rising Sun - that's thank you in Japanese, never let anyone say I am not grateful) have contributed yet another word to my vocabulary. 

This one is called Boketto, and it stands for the act of gazing vacantly into the distance without thinking.

You might think that the English language already has a word for it, and that the said word is called daydreaming, but Boketto is not the same as daydreaming.

Daydreaming implies that you are building castles in the sky. Conjuring up images, in your imagination, that do not exist, that do not even have a reason to exist. But the truth is that building castles in the sky is hard work, and should be acknowledged as such. I have been an avid daydreamer all my life and resent it when people dismiss daydreamers as if they were wastrels, and all their effort merely hot air.

But Boketto is something else altogether, and in my time, I have indulged in it too.

Boketto is just staring, without thinking. Total absence of thought. It does require effort, of course, because it implies that the mind has been emptied for a purpose. Because only when the mind is completely emptied, can we fill it with something else, right?

Hope you don't look down on the act of Boketto.



Bohni (pronounced bony) has nothing to do with the skeletal system or our bones.

It is the Hindi and Marathi (two languages from India) word for the first sale of the day. This first sale has a lot of auspicious connotations tagged on to it, and shopkeepers and small town business owners are known to be infused with fresh vigour once the Bohni is completed.

The first sale, no matter how small, helps the business defy the tyranny of the empty till, and that is why almost all of them are more than eager to incur a minor loss just for ensuring a bohni.

If English were to borrow this word, we could stretch it figuratively to mean that first critical gain, which puts you squarely back in the game, makes you a solid contender. 

The first time I saw my name in print as a byline for a 400-word piece I had written, I knew what bohni meant. 

As far as I was concerned, I had opened my account. 

I had arrived.



So you see, it's nice to Boketto and even nicer to land a bohni, but if you mean business, you had better keep them both separate. Anybody caught going Boketto at the time of striking a bohni will do so at his/her own risk.

Do you remember any significant bohni in your life?