Sunday, January 18, 2004 |
TIME OFF
Marghanita
Laski died, oh, more than 15 years ago. She and her husband, John
Howard, were our family friends, in that they have been our houseguests
as I have been theirs several times. Marghanita did not write many
books. Her main preoccupation was the language itself that we use in
everyday life. And she was a watchdog for its proper usage. She
contributed handsomely to the enrichment of the language by looking for
new words and phrases which had been trying to find a place in
contemporary usage, and she admitted, or disallowed, such words and
phrases by recommending their inclusion or otherwise in dictionaries.
Her influence on mainstream English was acknowledged by her
contemporaries, and, for several years towards the end of her life, she
was the President of the Royal Society. But, even though she was
reputed to be somewhat headmasterly over the usage of English, she had a
charming and engaging social presence. In the few days she spent in our
house, she and my wife made friends, they wrote chatty letters to one
another and exchanged recipes. As I said, Ms Laski died several years
ago, but, if she had been alive, I would have been addressing a letter
to her, saying something like this: "Dear Marghanita, I think I
have found a real gem of a quotation, deserving a place in the Oxford
Book... as its very first Indian entry! But, before I go on, I should
explain why I should have wanted to write that letter at all. It is that
the standard dictionaries of English quotations don’t have a single
Indian entry. My grievance was that such memorable utterances as Ranjit
Singh’s ‘All will be red’ ( Sab lal ho jayega!) and Nehru’s
Freedom at midnight speech about a "Tryst with destiny" were
every bit as worthy as, say, Horatio Nelson’s battle signal to his
fleet, "England expects every man to do his duty" and Winston
Churchill’s wartime oratorial flourishes in the British Parliament
about "blood, tears, toil and sweat" and "We shall not
flag or fail"? All these can be found in the Oxford Dictionary
of Quotations. Surely Delhi dur ast is as good as "All
roads lead to Rome"? And mind you, it is not as though these
quotations dictionaries are restricted to only the English language. All
European languages plus Greek and Latin, are represented; in their
original forms as well as in their English translations. So, why not Delhi
dur ast or Sub lal ho jayega? Writers have always used
quotations to pep up their writings, because they evoke scenes of the
occasions when they made their first appearance. The three words ‘let
them eat cake’ have the power of setting up a mental image of a
voluptuous, perfumed and painted woman, lolling in bed and saying those
three words when she was told that the people had no bread; Marie
Antoinette, towards the end of the 18th century. Then, just utter three
unfamiliar words, ‘Veni, vidi, vici’ and, as by magic, we’re
in the days before Christ was born, and in the presence of Julius
Caesar, thumping his chest and boasting: I came, I saw, I
conquered. Such is the power of a quotation. As it happens, the
scenes evoked are not necessarily true. For instance that callous remark
attributed to poor Marie Antoinette is said to have been wrong. She
never said ‘Let them eat cake’. All the same, she will never shake
off their grip. Long years ago, we made a tryst with destiny, and the
image that springs up is of midnight of 14th-15th August, 1947, and to a
moment of national rejoicing. But why such an uncivilised hour —
midnight? One wonders. Was it due to some thought of adding extra drama
to an historic moment? Nothing of the kind. The simple,
straight-from-the-horse’s-mouth answer, is that it is something to do
with astrological influences. August 15, the day chosen for the transfer
of power, was so inauspicious, that they decided to start the
proceedings on the night of the 14th, for that day was unambiguously
auspicious. So there! And what mental images do those three words, ‘Sub
lal ho jayega!’ conjure? A little man with a long beard, and
half-blind, who drank copiously from a golden goblet, Ranjeet Singh, ‘The
Lion of the Punjab’ no less, impish, lordly, but above all shrewd,
peering with his one working eye at a crude map of the Indian
subcontinent held up by his minions, and making that pronouncement: All
will be red! Almost prophetic words, and here there is absolutely no
doubt as to their authenticity as with most other quoted pronouncements
I remember that even Pandit Nehru’s ‘Tryst with destiny’ had
another claimant — his pushful secretary. All will be red, surely
should have been grabbed by quotation seekers. But no. The walls remain
unbreached, the door firmly locked. When will an Indian say something
that the editors of dictionaries of quotations will let in? Which
brings me back to that letter I might have sent to Ms Laski, if she had
been still around, and in a position to weigh the merits of a quotation
I was about to offer for her verdict. Paisa Khuda to nahin hai;
magar Khuda ki kasam, Khuda se kam bhi nahin hai! Money is not God;
but by God, it is not second to God either! These words were said by an
influential political personality in a room in one of Delhi’s
five-star hotels after he had been handed what resembled a thick wad of
currency notes, and for saying them Dilip Singh Judeo deserved a
triumphant entry in any mainstream book of quotations. In pressing my
claim, I would have pointed out that the English rendering lacked the
high-voltage charge of the original Hindi words and the rhythmic bracing
provided by two of the sound-bites which possess a twin-like similarity,
Khuda ki kasam and Khuda se kam. Here I must make it
clear that the other aspects of this incident which was publicly shown
on several TV channels, have nothing to do with my submission to Ms
Laski, and above all, I impute no motives either to Mr Judeo, or to
those who had ostensibly handed him that wad. My recommendation is
confined purely to the merits of the words which were heard to be said
by Shri Judeo. But, of course, all this is in the nature of airing a
thought — something that I might have done if it had happened when Ms
Laski was still there to give thought to my submission, for the fact is
that I now don’t know any one to whom I could make recommendations
about including quotations in dictionaries Alas! This
feature was published on January 4, 2004 |
||||||||||||||