The Tweet that wasn't!

Glad to find this post chosen for the Tangy Tuesday Picks

When I first encountered the phenomenon, I had no inclination to share with the world the answer to their question posed to me: “What are you doing?”! Why would someone want to know what I am up to? How would it help if someone knew that I was racking my brains for the next blogpost while my wife actually wanted me to get up and fetch the plumber. Would my follower come to my rescue? Suggest me an idea or better still fetch me that much-needed plumber and save our family from drowning….???

So it is with this characteristic disbelief in the power of a tweet that I joined Twitter and began telling the world what I was reading, what I was thinking and what I was doing. Thankfully Twitter did not expect me to tell the world what I was not doing! Like not paying attention to what my wife was saying or not paying my bills or insurance premia or whatever-it-is-that-ought-to-be-done. So the world could know about this only from my humor blog and not from twitter updates!

This last week, I was busy reading 140 articles/ columns/ blogposts, each of a length of about 1400 words (not characters) about one tweet from Shashi Tharoor! Each of these 140 thoughtful pieces of labour are worth a read and that is the singular reason of my not posting my thoughts about this tweet all this while.
Perhaps if one were to contest which other tweet posted on twitter since its formation has been so much written about in the print media/blogs/websites other than Twitter, this one certainly takes the cake …and perhaps the Guinness Book record too!

I decided not to post a single word about this much-hyped tweet from the much-admired public figure who is only just stepping into the political waters of India. Unless….unless..unless I really have something different to say from all that has already been said. So here I go and post one without really saying anything at all about the aforesaid tweet.

But it wasn’t long ago that a certain voluminous work of writing which was published by an Indian politician of repute was debated and done to death by the party to which he belonged without so much as reading it! And now it is this 140 character tweet (which I suppose but am not sure) that many have read in full, faced the same wrath as the former for simply using some imaginative colloquial figures of speech! So it is not the length of the text…aha!....that can arouse the sensibilities of the members of the public at large!
(Editor - Readers are requested not to confuse the words length and arouse and members in any other context otherwise unintended by this blogpost).

An answer to a book is a book and an answer to a tweet should be a tweet. So, this post is not an answer to the tweet. So what exactly is this post? Well, I had a nightmare! That the Government of India is planning to regulate and control humour – by forming a Ministry of Humor headed by ….by…by…I couldn’t figure out this guy …because I woke up in a sweat, just then!

To begin with an insertion in the oath: “I shall not hurt the sensibilities of the people of our land by using outlandish phrases, idioms, figures of speech or any kind of grammatical connotations that my countrymen are not familiar with or accustomed to. Nor shall I mock anyone under the pretext of being funny or humorous due to the edge i have over the others due to my knowledge or technological prowess....”
Fellow bloggers may help by supplementing in the comments section!

Going forward, newcomers may be handed out an introductory brief including a few tips compiled by some old timers which goes thus:
To avoid misunderstanding, pandemonium in assemblies resulting in hung parliaments, waste of newsprint, etc., do not use phrases in your tweets, press briefs, media appearances, interviews, like:
1. “barking up the wrong tree” – people may think you called them a dog…worse if it refers to a female fellow-politician, for reasons I am sure you will understand.
2. “his bark is worse than his bite” – for similar reasons
3. “it’s a dog’s life” – in any context for similar reasons
4. “Chewing the cud” or “ruminating” – it will have much the same effect as the well- known “holy cows”
5. “offering gems to swine” – especially intelligentsia coming into politics should avoid this phrase
6. “cleanse the Augean stables” – though it means bring about a reform in some public evil, which every politician must really strive to do, this phrase is banned
7. “ruffle a person’s feathers” – it would amount to calling one a bird or bird-brained depending on which party the offended politician belongs.
8. “a fish in troubled waters” - why not simply say a politician in troubled circumstances, instead of stirring up the oceans with this idiom?
9. “flutter the dovecotes” – though it means disturb the equanimity of a body of people , that is exactly what one will end up doing by using this phrase!
10. “kill two birds with one stone” – you could be tried for plotting a double murder!
11. “beard the lion” – meaning – resolutely approach your superior with a demand – but using this idiom could find your approach road cut once and for all!
12. “riding the high horse” – as in behaving high-handedly - but may be mistaken for reference to horse-trading in politics – using this phrase could cause you nightmares!
13. “a little bird told me” – an inherent risk of a new ministry being set up to investigate the possibility
14. “a white elephant” – to refer to burdensome expense of no value – but may be mistaken to refer to elephant statues and statues of other politicians
15. talking of elephants, don’t even use “Gr8” in your tweets – they may mean ‘Grrr’..for the figure of ‘8’ and might irk the sensibilities of prominent figures like Jayanti Natarajan et al! It is always better to be cautious of such possibilities, you know.

I hope I did have the last word on this one tweet without really saying anything about it!
Could you call something that has been so much written about a mere tweet?

Blogger’s Postscript: If you want to read all the 140 articles about the tweet, try Googling “Shashi Tharoor cattle class holy cow tweet articles columns blogposts” and see for yourself.

I said Googling! Not Go ogling! Damn our sensibilities!