Velvet Lance
We have all
been through this before. An awkward situation, the urge to utter something
sharp, pungent; the challenge to handle rising anger, righteous indignation. Or
simply the need to convey something negative without being hurtful. Admittedly,
not many are endowed with the rare ability to instantly turn the tide, to
silken the rough edges.
There was
once a time when campus recruitment was unheard of. We were young and raring to
go and jobs were scarce. All offices in the business district and factories in
Industrial Estates would have a prominent ‘No Vacancy’ board outside. It was
known as ‘apply, apply, no reply’ epoch. Just as in the Carpenters’ song ‘Please
Mr. Postman’, the sight of postman approaching the house would send hopes
soaring. I was fortunate to have a job.
So, when my Chief told me the Export Division needed an Assistant and enquired
whether I knew anyone who fitted the bill I immediately thought of my school
cricket team captain. I took him.
My friend
was closeted in the Cabin for about 20 minutes and I kept my fingers crossed.
When he emerged, I saw he had a faint smile on his face. ‘I am capable of improvement,
your boss told me’ he said ‘and asked me to see him after six months’. He didn’t
pass muster, but I could not discern any dejection; instead there was a
positive vibe about him.
When we
enrolled ourselves as volunteers in an organization for prevention of suicide, we
were to be trained on the first day by a certain British lady. She had made it
clear the previous evening itself that she would start the session exactly at 9
a.m. and those who came late needed to wait till the first break at 11 a.m., to be able to join the session. There were inevitably
quite a few who could not make it at 9 the next day. When the second session
started after 11, she easily picked the late comers and told them, ‘I am sorry
I had to start the session without you’. They couldn't be more abashed. Each of them was
ready with an excuse, mostly genuine, but it was she who apologised for their
missing the first session.
We are of
course aware of George Bernard Shaw and the Chesterton facing each other on a
narrow path where only one could pass. ‘I don’t give way to fools’ declared Chesterton.
‘I do’ said Shaw, allowing passage. When the danseuse Isadora Duncan proposed
to Shaw and exulted that their children would have her beauty and his
intelligence, Shaw wondered aloud ‘suppose they have your brain and my beauty?’
Another incident that comes readily to the mind is Mahatma Gandhi, ‘the
half-naked Fakir’ going to meet the British King. A journalist asked Gandhi, “Mr.
Gandhi, did you feel under-dressed when you met the King?” Gandhi quietly
replied, “The King was wearing enough clothes for both of us!”
The
paparazzi pitilessly stalking the celebrities is par for the course in western
countries. Many of them used to even sneak into sea and remain underwater for
long to be able to shoot women swimming in the private beaches of the wealthy
and titled. And Diana, the people’s Princess as she was called, was a special
target. Once when the Queen stepped out of the Palace, she saw the paparazzi
milling around. She looked at them sternly and said ‘I wish, I wish you would
go away’. No ‘get the hell out of here’, no ‘scram’, no ‘leave us alone” etc.
etc. The reproach imbued with such dignity made many of them quit the place
their heads bowed.
The most
dexterous use of language in recent times to my mind was by Anil Kumble when
led the Indian team Downunder. During the 2nd Test at Sydney in early January 2008, the atmosphere was surcharged, the
heat was palpable, there was a charge of racial slander against an Indian team
member, and the Aussies behaved in the words of Peter Roebuck ‘like a bunch of
wild dogs’. Anil Kumble had called for a press conference at the end of the
match. There was a widespread expectation that each controversial incident
would be discussed threadbare, the Indian points of view marshalled and
presented in a convincing manner, may be with a few barbs thrown in between.
Anil Kumble, in a display of remarkable maturity, took the wind out of the
sails of the adversaries by uttering a stunner.
He merely said
‘Only one team played in the true spirit of the game.’
That stung
to the quick. The Aussies were devastated. There were immediate murmurs,
grumblings and protests galore. Mind you, Kumble did not even specify which of
the two teams had played in the real spirit of the game. He left it unsaid. But
Aussies were completely castled. With a master stroke, Kumble made the Aussies
look at themselves in the mirror and not like what they saw.
That’s right,
with an adroit choice of words one can disarm one’s bête noire even while
sporting a smile.
