Mr Tharoor complained that a newly launched channel’s coverage of his deceased wife Sunanda Tharoor was an “exasperating farrago of distortions, misrepresentations & outright lies…” Those who have not had the privilege of Mr Tharoor’s education did what is now done when in doubt. They rushed to the research librarian of first resort, aka Google. The tweet went viral, as a successful tweet is meant to, and then, as the phrase goes, it broke the Indian political internet. Mr Tharoor even remarked with the satisfaction of someone who knows more Latinate words in the English language than the average Jai that he was happy to have contributed the word “farrago” to the national conversation. Merci.
Now, one could have asked Mr Tharoor to revisit Orwell’s “Politics and the English” language and requested that he use simple words. One could have suggested that he might have wanted to use the word khichri for easier comprehension or, if like a headmaster he wanted to ensure that readers remember there is something called a dictionary, he could have used kedgeree. May be the word farrago just came to him at that time of anger and distress as his mind was echoing virago, a case of what linguists would call lexical retrieval of a phonological parallel. Whatever it may be, and however he came to it, and however ornate and little used the word is, it is mot juste; just slightly transferred. What he described in those words was actually not a channel, but our country, and our people. Let us begin with Mr Tharoor himself not for any other reason except he used the words that sent us running to the dictionary.
His reputation for the longest time was based on a delightful reworking of the Mahabharata where Indira Gandhi was a modern-day Duryodhana and Nehru, Dhritarashtra. Some years later, having failed in his bid to become the UN Secretary General, he decided to join the kauravas of his own telling. Guess by the time he returned to India, the kauravas may have become the pandavas, or the metaphors just got mixed. In fact, even his bid to become the head of the United Nations can be read as the result of an exasperating farrago of logic and ambition. Don’t ask when the last time was that a citizen of a country that wanted a permanent seat at the Security Council became the Secretary General, or ask when a career UN bureaucrat rose to the highest office at the UN. Don’t run to the search engine. The answer is none for the first. For the second, only one, an African representative – Kofi Annan – who filled in when an incumbent African – Boutros Boutros Ghali – was vetoed out after the first of the customary two terms for a continent. But this would be unfair to Tharoor. He is one of us.
Look at our political parties. There is the BJP that wants to speed off to technological nirvana riding on cows and bulls; the Indian communists who religiously oppose the Uniform Civil Code; the Indian socialists who use Madhu Limaye’s birthday to invite the Congress and assorted others for a grand tahari, and the venerable Congress, which is the original farrago of all political hues. But this too is unfair.
Look at our Constitution. Students in civics classes have been trying for the last 70 years to figure out if it is unitary or federal. Depends where you look, say the scholars. We have a preamble that says we are socialist, and every minister swears by it because he needs to if he wants a room in any mantralaya. Ask what kind of socialism they have been promoting over the last 25 odd years, and you will get: a version of our kind of socialism. What else is Sabka Saath, Sabka Vikas brought to you on a lotus petal, but our kind of socialism? We don’t mind legislating one religion, but we wouldn’t want to practise the same for others – our kind of secularism. Pretty much every single political party, except for the few that don’t matter, has sons, daughters or nephews inheriting power – our kind of republic. Not a farrago of distorted concepts here. It is just us being us. Then that bisebele bhaat called the Directive Principles of State Policy, where prohibiting the slaughter of cows and calves and other milch and draught cattle, and abolition of intoxicating drinks and drugs sits comfortably with eliminating inequalities in the country. But this is being unfair to our political classes and the framers.
Look at Bollywood – Hindi or Urdu films where most of those who act and mouth the lines don’t know how to read either Hindi or Urdu. They prefer to read it in the Roman script, and we the viewers even prefer the film posters in that language. We mix and match. Look at IPL – a delicious dish wherein you can recognize cricket just as much as you would rice in well-made pongal. Or even better look at our news television, the agent provocateur of Mr Tharoor’s tweet. With eight to ten people shouting at, around, beyond and despite each other, try finding the news there. It is a haleem of fact and fiction – an inscrutable fusion of rasas with a preference for the bhayanak and the raudra that leaves the viewer with hasya.
So yes, Mr Tharoor is right. He actually described the republic most appropriately. What is India if not a farrago? Being a little mixed up at that moment, he used the majuscule, what we would call the capital letter, and treated the republic like a proper noun and even added an abbreviation after it. Forget as long as there is a television channel, as long as we are a republic, there will always be exasperation because we are a glorious farrago. For those who prefer rice to corn, and homespun Indian to Latinate words: we are a bhel. Don’t be ashamed about using it though just because no one will go to the dictionary. It seems to come from the Deshaj bhilna, to mix, and becomes bhel, a mixture.
