Funny Business: Mani Shankar Aiyar vs Cattle Class

Friends, Hans Rajians and Minister Maken, lend me thy tears. Even as the Greeks mourn the tragic drama around the drachma, you have endured worse. The good that Kalmadi did will be buried deep in some CAG report and all that’s left behind is Mr Aiyar’s poisoned barb about the poor vocabulary of the sweaty masses. Should we the cattle-class travelling, Anna cap wearing, constantly swearing non-Doscos (slang for Old boys of The Doon School) take this insult lying down? Or for that matter on our fours? It is time to stand up on our dictionaries and be counted.

But Mr Aiyar is an honourable man. So what recourse do we have other than marching towards, Philippi, oops, Delhi and exercising our tonsils outside Mr Aiyar’s residence? Here are a few options: # Let each one of us, especially our wounded brethren from the house of Hans Raj, vow to learn a new word a day and send letters filled with them to Mr Aiyar. Imagine a bleary-eyed Mr Aiyar (he is mostly that way) opening letters every morning — hundreds of them — with lines like “Honourable sir, even though you may find it boggling that I use words like dichotomous, your rebarbative demeanour and your obfuscatory language makes me want to regurgitate my breakfast on the bedside Hemingway novella.”

Fret not, gentle Hans Rajian, a line like that is born only after several determined stabs at the Oxford Thesaurus.

# Let us all master Tamil, Mr Aiyar’s mother tongue and then quote couplets from the Tamil classic, Thirukkural if we happen to meet him in the flesh. Sample a translation of couplet number 100: “To say unpleasant things, when we have nice ones, is like eating unripe fruit, ignoring sweet ripe fruits.” Such pearls of practical wisdom might also benefit some of the acid-tongued fellow Congressmen with whom Mr Aiyar hobnobs.

Mr Tiwari, Diggy, are you listening? Also, friend-turned-miffed-ally M Karunanidhi will finally smile at the thought of folks north of the Vindhyas finally getting the pronunciation his daughter’s name (Kanimozhi) right.