Last week, the country was abuzz with Kanhaiya Kumar’s speech on his return to the JNU campus. Many people were electrified by what they felt was a refreshing change of tone and content in his speech as compared to our mainstream politicians. But you have to give it to some of our politicians. It’s hard to come up with scintillating rhetoric on a daily basis, especially when they’ve got cameras and microphones following them around 24X7 trying to capture every last sound that escapes their lips. When they do get it right, though, their comments sound like they should be lines in a movie script, as these five examples show.
“You have your amma, even I have mine. Your Amma is Amma, my Amma is Mummy. But all of us have Amma”. Venkaiah Naidu reportedly burst out with these lines at an AIADMK MP who interrupted Naidu’s speech during question hour to draw attention to TN Chief Minister Jayalalithaa’s response to the same issue.
We’re left wondering if the comparison between amma ammas and mummy ammas trumps the famous hierarchy between known knowns and unknown unknowns that Donald Rumsfeld once tried to teach us about.
“Jayalalithaa rules through 3 Ps: Police, Press and Panneerselvam”, said Premalatha Vijayakanth of the DMDK in a recent speech in which she took shots at both the AIADMK and the DMK. Perhaps Premalatha secretly wishes the twitter campaign #OPS4CM had succeeded?
“The market is full of music to move your body, but music that moves your heart is only in India.” If we are talking about quotable quotes, could the Prime Minister be far from the action? In this instance, PM Modi was lavishing his praise on the Art of Living World Cultural Festival being held in Delhi. But we are wondering which of the many indigenous musical traditions he’s talking about.
“The country is not the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister is not the country.” Where the Prime Minister is, could Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi be far behind? The two have been exchanging blows for a while now, and this was Gandhi’s riposte on the PM’s methods last week.
While many thought the speech unusually good by Rahul Gandhi’s standards, the Prime Minister dismissed him with a comment that some people age physically but do not mature mentally.
“The fruit is ripening. When it will fall into the milk is yet to be decided.” DMK chief M Karunanidhi has always been known for his poetic turns of phrase. This was his description of the ongoing talks with the DMDK on the possibility of a poll alliance.
The BJP which was also in talks with the DMDK responded in the form of Tamilisai Soundararajan’s comment that the BJP was not worried, “whether the fruit falls in milk or under someone’s feet.”
Now that the DMDK has decided to go it alone, do both the parties think the offered fruit was sour grapes?