Walking the talk

There is a great deal of gargling with saline water going on in the whitewashed corridors of power in the Capital, as vocal cords are being prepared for the marathon session of talks that lies ahead of us. Listen to its persistent ululation and you’ll understand that India is very serious about the proposed talking.

It was the former US ambassador to this nation, John Kenneth Galbraith who, having observed us for many years at close quarters, once remarked,‘‘Of all the races on earth, the Indians have the most nearly inexhaustible appetite for oratory.’’
I believe Galbraith has not done sufficient justice to our national genius. He has erred on the side of caution. Our appetite for oratory, Mr Galbraith, is well and truly inexhaustible and no Galbraith can take that away from us by resorting to a certain parsimony with words.

Let me put it this way. We, the Indian people, are gifted with voice boxes that come with no volume control and certainly no stop button. Loquaciousness flows through our lungs, volubility runs through our veins, garrulity is imprinted in our genes. We are never at a loss for a few words that end up multiplying faster than rabbits. If I were to put it across in a more expeditious manner, no one, no force on earth — nuclear or otherwise — can shut us up if we don’t want to be shut up (and we usually don’t).

Remember that nine-hour marathon speech V.K. Krishna Menon delivered at the United Nations decades ago, and which record still has not been bettered? To this day, witnesses to that display of yabbering who happen to be still alive, are nursing headaches as a result of having heard the Menon Marathon.
It is said that representatives of other member states went home, had lunch, snatched a quick nap, had a leisurely cup of tea, watched a play on Broadway, and returned to the UN only to discover that Menon had still not discovered a full stop in his punctuation and was, indeed, still in full flow. It may also be noted for the record that the subject of his verbal exertions on that particular occasion happened to be Kashmir.

Look at brave K.C. Pant, the prime minister’s special emissary for talking in Kashmir. Pant wants talks so badly that he is combing the hillsides of the state to find an audience. He pretends that he only wants to listen but actually that is just a ruse to gather an audience, an euphemism for an abiding desire to be heard. He has already confabulated with the shikarawallahs and the apricot sellers, engaged the peanut sellers and the pony-wallahs, played interlocutor to carpet weavers and walnut wood carvers and, when last heard, was sizing up the Chinars on the waterfront wondering if they would care to listen to what he had to say.

I must say, however, with all the deepest conviction at my command, that my favourite talker is that last Englishman of India. I refer, of course, to one who is presently the union minister of external affairs who also happens to be the union minister of defence, the ever erudite, polysyllabic, polysynthesing, polyglotic, epiglottic Jaswant Singh.

People say he was given additional charge of the ministry of defence (when the earlier minister of defence had no defence against the Tehelka charges), because the prime minister is partial to him. Nothing can be farther from the truth. The prime minister, being an extremely wise man and no mean talker himself, realised well enough that here was a person with enough verbal ammunition to preside over not just two ministries, but many more if so required.

What’s more, the prime minister must have also shrewdly calculated that if there was one man who could single-handedly throw the obstreperous Indian media into a blue funk, it was this man. So preoccupied would they be in running for cover and reaching for dictionaries to deconstruct the defence-cum-external affairs minister’s dialogic and occasionally diatribic deliveries, that they would forget to ask him the right questions.

This horizontal ministerial proliferation, as Jaswant Singh would himself have put it, is a most apt, apposite, appropriate, fitting, felicitous, inspired, propitious appointment. This double-minister who talks on the double is India’s secret weapon, more deadly than all the Trishuls and Agnis we may have at our command.

The Pakistanis, therefore, had better watch out as they walk down the high road to talks. I would suggest that they arm themselves with dictionaries, thesauruses, encylopaedias and wordbooks of every description. And, yes, I would urge them to invest in some extra large ear muffs and wads of cotton. Going by all indications, it’s going to be a particularly ear-splitting July ahead, as we prepare to walk the talk.

Earlier Columns