• Valson Thampu

‘What do you call a person who terrorises people with words,’ is a question making its rounds on the Internet. The answer is also provided: A Tharoorist! I am sure most Congressmen in Kerala will agree.

Language is at once a tool and an ornament. It is a tool, when used in order to communicate. It becomes an ornament, when it is used only to impress. In such instances, those who are eager to be impressed with the outlandishness and reconditeness of the words used are as much to blame as those who seek to impress them that way. As a rule, ornaments are not of much day-to-day use. So, when language is used ornamentally, the listeners are impressed, but left as they were before they were treated to the feast of words. It is unlikely that you resort to flowery style or pedantic diction when you care for the outcome. Then simple, direct expressions are used instinctively. If your house is on fire you won’t shout ‘Conflagration, assistance!’ You’d cry out, ‘Fire, help!’ Unless, of course, you’d rather impress those in the vicinity than save your house.

There is, surely, a great deal to be said in favour of enlarging the range of one’s vocabulary; all the more so when one works through a language as lexically rich and varied as English is. After all, language is the medium of thought and expression. Our linguistic limitations constrain and enfeeble of our thoughts. Even so, it is erroneous to equate profundity of thought with ponderousness of diction. In the end, it is thought that matters, not verbal flourish. Treating style as an end in itself smacks of vanity and betokens cultural elitism.

Keralites have every right to be proud that they have a politician as erudite, articulate and suave as Tharoor is. In this respect he is, I dare say, rarely rivalled in the country. He is not only a word-smith but also a word-wizard. That is an aspect of his being a world citizen, which is hugely to his credit. I wish we had a few more of his pedigree. But, the same felicity takes on another hue when Tharoor is in Kerala. It is second nature to most Malayalees to be enamoured of English to the disparagement of their mother tongue. We assume that knowing English -or, what we are pleased to assume is English- is incompatible with cherishing Malayalam, or attaining proficiency therein. It is as if being English-savvy constitutes, in itself, a cultural merit. The mettle of that merit increases in proportion to the outlandishness of a speaker’s theatricality in using that language. So, the less you understand a speaker in English, the more impressed you tend to be. Your awe of him goes up, correspondingly. No other linguistic-group in India suffers as much from this vanity as Malayalees do.

Tharoor knows this. So, he is not disinclined to indulge Malayalees in this regard. Fortunately, he is eminently qualified for the purpose. It is a matter of the good old demand-and-supply principle. And when the supply comes from Tharoor, expect it to be as exotic as it is fecund and luxurious.

That reminds me of Marcus Aurelius, the philosopher-king of Rome. “I owe it to Rusticus,” he writes, ‘that I kept away from rhetoric, and, poetry and foppery of speech.” Can we accuse Tharoor of ‘foppery of speech’? Certainly not! He is merely indulging Malayalees vis-à-vis a disposition that is second nature to them. He is not the author of this vanity. Nor is it his calling to reform the denizens of God’s own land in this respect. He is a politician at a time when politics is assumed to be the art of the possible. If Malayalees, afflicted with cultural pedestrianism happen to crave for a dose of the exotic, why not oblige them; especially when you can jolly well afford to, as no one else can?

Epictetus, the Roman Stoic, would, however, beg to differ. He was harsh with those who sought his instruction: ‘not for the sake of learning, but in order to show off.’ Having acquired smatterings of philosophy, persons of that kind went round flaunting their attainments in ‘city dinners, astonishing the aldermen who sat next to them with the puzzles of hypothetical syllogisms’.

In this regard, we may learn something from Hermes, the Greek messenger god. He was regarded the ‘conductor,’ because speech conducts one man’s thought into his neighbour’s soul. He was also the ‘bright-shiner’, because speech makes dark things clearer. His winged feet are the symbols of ‘winged words’. He is the ‘leader of souls’, because words soothe the soul to rest. He was also the ‘awakener from sleep’, because words rouse men to action. I would rather that Tharoor be the Hermes of Kerala!

Let me end by quoting Epictetus. “There are many preachers,” he said, “who make long sermons: if they are well applauded, they are as glad as if they had obtained a kingdom: if they bring their sermon to an end in silence, their despondency is worse, I may almost say, than hell.”

Tharoor has every right to use his verbal and oratorical flamboyance as he may please. The problem is not that he obliges those who are culturally vain and intellectually shallow. The real problem is that most of us prefer, alas, glamour to sincerity.