Does It Play In Deoria?

Humour is all about context, a lesson young Shashi Tharoor will have to learn before he transforms himself from a UN tadpole into a ministerial frog. Take, for example, one irate comment on his Twitter: “Yeh kya hai tweet-twat?” Clearly, the Hindi speaker has no idea of what “twat” could mean in English. At the same time, when a defender of Tharoor wrote an English letter to the editor that Tharoor only meant economy class passengers are “packed like sardines” into their seats, he got it quite wrong. For Tharoor had referred to cattle in Europe and America being packed into trains and trucks for transportation. So he meant not packed like sardines at all but packed, indeed, like cattle. Only Tharoor forgot, for one distracted moment, that cattle are packed only to be sent to the slaughter. And they are slaughtered only because they are not regarded in the mlechchha West as “holy cows”—and Tharoor was only letting himself in for a great deal of trouble by referring, in India, to cattle being sent to the butcher as “holy cows”. Alas, what plays in Peoria does not play in Mayiladuthurai. (For the current generation of readers, I daresay I have to clarify that “Does it play in Peoria?” was the favourite litmus test of the Nixon crowd before they took some outrageous decision that shocked the world but went down great in small-town Peoria, Illinois.)

A Hindi speaker can never get it wrong. For the funniest retort I have heard in Parliament was when a BJP backbencher, enthralled by yet another brilliant Vajpayee speech, called out “Atalji, aap atal rahein” and Vajpayee wanly turned around and said, “Atal tho hoon lekin na bhooliye ki saath saath Bihari bhi hoon”! Howls of laughter ensued, but had he said any such thing in English the entire Bihar platoon would surely have swooped down on him like the Assyrian horde.

Boringly, I have to clarify to readers that the Assyrian reference is from the Old Testament—which goes to prove the point that if wit is the clever play of words, juxtaposing the unexpected and drawing startling lateral parallels, of which P.G. Wodehouse was the unchallenged master, it must be instantly recognisable to the audience. You cannot refer to the Lakshman rekha in the House of Commons and expect to get away with it without explanation, but anyone who started to explain to the Lok Sabha what the Lakshman rekha is would justifiably be booed out of the House.

My first-ever visit to the Lok Sabha was as a student in 1959 or early 1960, when the Nehru government dismissed the duly elected Communist government in Kerala and I secured a pass to listen to the Communist leader, Comrade S.A. Dange, denounce Jawaharlal for this outrage on the Constitution. Dange ended his peroration by drawing a parallel between Nehru’s action and Yudhishtira being persuaded to shout out to Dronacharya on the battlefield of Kurukshetra that his son Ashwatthama was dead, “Ashwatthama athaha”, and then add sotto voce “kunjaraha” (for it was the elephant, not Drona’s son Ashwatthama, who had been killed) at which Yudhishtira’s chariot, which always rode above the ground for he never told a lie, fell immediately to earth because this was a white lie. Nehru’s chariot, added Dange, had also bitten the dust because he had betrayed his reputation as a principled democrat. Curious, a Communist atheist resorting to the Mahabharata—but the House sat stunned and bemused by this telling simile. However, would not the point have been totally lost on the US Congress?

Indeed, how could I tell any audience not of India of my own encounter with Yudhishtira? I happened to be on a flight on which the airhostess complained about a passenger who turned out to be a junior Haryana minister whom chief minister Bhajan Lal intensely disliked. He seized on the complaint to dismiss the minister. I was then asked on TV what I had seen. Truthfully, I replied that I had seen nothing. At five the next morning, my phone rang, Bhajan Lal on the line:

“Yeh kya keh diya hai tumnein?”
“Kya sahib?”
“Ki tumnein kuchh nahi dekha”
“Lekin maine kuchh nahi dekha”
“Toh Yudhishter banne ki kya aavashyakta hai?”

A decade on, I am still recovering from that exchange!

Let me share with you another tale when I got myself into a Tharoor-like jam. I had been appointed the conference spokesman at the 7th Nonaligned Summit held in New Delhi in 1983. NAM conferences always get off to a genteel start with everyone politely pretending to listen to the set speeches of the leaders—and then the going gets rough, everyone fighting his corner till the last possible minute. In consequence, the agonised question of Cambodia/Kampuchea got untangled only at three in the morning. I immediately summoned a press conference to brief the media. One correspondent asked why NAM outcomes always emerged at such unearthly hours. Turning to the NAM symbol mounted behind me, I remarked that it was perhaps because the symbol should be changed from the dove to the owl. The Hindi press went berserk the next morning, saying I had described the distinguished leaders gathered—more than 100 of them from across the region—as “ulloos”, while the Western media, notably The New Yorker, sang paeans of praise over my wit and humour. Indira Gandhi, like Queen Victoria, was not amused—and I was promptly suspended, but, happily, a bit like Tharoor, restored to my perch shortly thereafter.

What the Tharoors and the Aiyars have to remember is that all the world is not St Stephen’s College and that what gets by as a PJ (Punjabi Joke) in Allnutt Court can get all of Ludhiana baying for your blood even for calling it a PJ. In a multilingual, multicultural society a joke has to be tailored to the audience. Indeed, even a gesture has to be tailored to the audience, as Tharoor discovered when he foolishly tried to teach a Kerala audience true patriotism by holding their hands across their chests like Americans do when they sing their national anthem. The Malayalis were not amused. Nor was I. Imagine learning patriotism from the Yankees!

For context, let me retell a Tharoor joke from his 125th anniversary lecture at St Stephen’s. A Kansas farmer came out to India to help improve Indian agriculture. Having had enough of tiresome briefings at Roosevelt House, he decided to go see Indian agriculture for himself. Soon enough, he came upon a Sardarji farmer tilling his land. Getting down from his car, the Kansas farmer asked the Sardarji how large was his farm. With immense pride, the Sardar replied that it stretched all the way from the river out there to the road right here. Bewildered, the Kansan was about to ask how anyone could profitably farm such a small patch when the Sardar politely asked in turn how large was the other’s Kansas farm. With matching pride, the Kansan replied that if he got into his tractor at crack of dawn, it would be lunch before he reached his southern limit and the sun would be setting as he returned to his northern reaches. The Sardar sympathetically shook his head and said, “You know, I used to have a tractor like that once!” The assembled Stephanians, I among them, loved it—but let Tharoor try telling it in Botswana.

So do I have problems telling my favourite (true) story to the present generation? The long-serving Soviet ambassador in Washington, Anatoly Dobrynin, was at an elegant dinner. His neighbour, a leading Washington socialite, gushed to him, “Mr Ambassador, what do you think would have happened if Lee Harvey Oswald had shot Khruschev instead of Kennedy?” Gravely thinking over this profound poser, Dobrynin replied, “Madam, I do not think Onassis would have married Mrs Khruschev!”

Forty years ago, the story would have drawn uproarious laughter. Now, I have to explain who was Dobrynin, what was the Soviet Union; that Oswald was the assassin and Kennedy the president; that just before killing Kennedy, Oswald had been in Moscow; that after the assassination, Kennedy’s widow, Jacqueline, had shocked the world by marrying an obscenely wealthy Greek ship-owner called Aristotle Onassis who was old enough to be her father; and that Mrs Khruschev was the dumpy wife of the dumpy general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. By the time all this is explained, the whole point of the story is lost.

So, there you are, Shashi Tharoor. PJs are for Stephanians and Stephanians only. Remember you are now a public figure. And while Twitter may get you some cheap publicity, it lies in the public domain. It is, therefore, a mortal danger to what remains of your political career. Nixon thought he could get away with bugging himself. You might still have to delete your expletives and erase 18 1/2 minutes from your Twitter if you are to survive. Nixon didn’t. But best of luck—from one sinner to another!