Tharoorosaurus

by Shashi Tharoor

  32.

  Oxymoron

  noun

  A PHRASE OR FIGURE OF SPEECH IN WHICH SEEMINGLY CONTRADICTORY TERMS APPEAR IN CONJUNCTION WITH EACH OTHER

  USAGE

  Even as he swore to love her for ever, he was looking around to see if he could do better, but she was taken

  in by his falsely true manner.

  Oxymorons sound like idiots out of breath gasping for air, but they’re just phrases (like ‘falsely true’ in this example, or ‘loving hate’ in Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet) that combine two words of opposite meaning to good effect. ‘Oxymoron’ is derived from the Greek words oksus, meaning sharp or pointed, and moros, meaning dull or foolish. Of course, for an oxymoron to work, the combined expression has to make sense: there’s no point saying ‘black white’ and expecting people to roar in appreciation, unless you are referring to an African gentleman named Mr White, in which case it’s an oxymoron.

  Literature is full of oxymorons, the most famous, of course, being Shakespeare’s ‘Parting is such sweet sorrow’. The immortal P.G. Wodehouse said, ‘I always advise people never to give advice.’ Irene Peter disregarded this in offering the following advice: ‘Always be sincere, even when you don’t mean it.’ (But then an unknown wag pointed out: ‘Free advice is worth what you paid for it.’)

  Others have also produced oxymora: the movie producer Samuel Goldwyn morosely said, ‘If I could drop dead right now, I’d be the happiest man alive.’ Paul Fussell found ‘nothing more depressing than optimism’. And the author Edna St. Vincent Millay uttered an oxymoronic profundity when she wrote, ‘I love humanity, but I hate people.’

  In fact, oxymorons are far more common than one might imagine. How often has someone, caught in a place where she shouldn’t be, been told to ‘act naturally’? How many seemingly knowledgeable people have confided in you an ‘open secret’? How often has a clerk demanded an ‘original copy’? Or, while negotiating a service, have you demanded an ‘exact estimate’? Or said, in a nostalgic conversation, ‘I distinctly remember forgetting that.’ One might even suggest that ‘oxymoron’ is a ‘typically unusual’ term! These are all oxymorons, because if you look at each word, one seems to contradict the other, and yet their meaning is perfectly clear

  to all of us.

  When I was assailed for my use of the expression ‘cattle class’, I was ‘clearly misunderstood’—I had used the term, but it didn’t mean what my critics thought it did. When roll-call was taken in a boarding school and a girl was ‘found missing’, that was an oxymoron as well as a major crisis for the school administration. Boys’ boarding schools, of course, feature a lot of conversations about girls, and many of the superficial judgements passed involve oxymorons— ‘God, she’s pretty ugly’, ‘she’s awfully beautiful’, ‘that woman was barely dressed’, and the like. Girls, being less superficial, are likely to describe the boys they know with other oxymorons: ‘he’s seriously funny’, for instance, or ‘he‘s terribly nice’. Unless, of course, they’re clearly confused!

  Oxymorons can be deliberate or inadvertent: to speak of a joke being greeted by an audience with ‘deafening silence’ is an example of the former, whereas a television reporter prattling on about the ‘increasing decline’ in our employment rate suggests the latter. ‘What a “fine mess” you’ve got us into,’ Laurel and Hardy were constantly saying to each other. Most people are ‘terribly pleased’ to be invited to a picnic where there’s a ‘definite possibility’ that champagne will be served in ‘plastic glasses’, while they are urged to indulge in ‘responsible drinking’. Similarly a young couple spending their quarantine ‘alone together’, while the woman wears ‘loose tights’ and they eat ‘jumbo shrimps’, combines several examples of both kinds.

  By their very nature, oxymorons also lend themselves to low humour—when terms that are in fact not contradictory are placed together and described as oxymorons (even when they are not supposed to be), the joke is that you think the expression is a contradiction in terms. ‘American culture’, some Brits say, is an oxymoron. Some diplomats consider ‘United Nations’ an oxymoron, since nations are rarely united. A few pseudo-intellectuals list ‘military intelligence’ as an oxymoron, since they sneer that only the unintelligent go off to risk their lives for the country, or even worse, in another oxymoron, a ‘civil war’—for what could be more uncivil than warfare? Of course, when they quit, many soldiers seek an ‘active retirement’—another oxymoron. That is, if they hadn’t been hit earlier by ‘friendly fire’—an oxymoron invented by the military to mask moments of incendiary incompetence. Our public seems to think ‘honest politician’ is an oxymoron, as is ‘business ethics’; they also laugh at ‘educational television’ as a misnomer. Many an anti-romantic would claim ‘Happily Married’ is an oxymoron . . .

  The recent ‘social distancing measures’ in India prompted several of us to treat each day as a ‘working holiday’. Some, stuck in confinement, were inclined to let out a ‘silent scream’. Of course, if they violate the curfew, the government made it clear they will respond with a ‘zero tolerance’ policy.

  One can sometimes stretch an oxymoron beyond a two-word phrase to an idea. Only Donald Trump, of course, could speak of exceeding an ‘unlimited budget’. At the other end of the moral scale, Sarojini Naidu said of Mahatma Gandhi, ‘If only he knew how much it costs us to keep him in poverty!’ Sam Goldwyn came up with several of these longer oxymora: ‘Anyone who goes to a psychiatrist ought to have his head examined’ was the best, though ‘A verbal contract isn’t worth the paper it’s written on’ is the best-known. And what about the wit who said, ‘Thank God I’m an atheist!’?

  Finally, ask frustrated computer users to nominate an oxymoron from their daily experience, and many will suggest ‘Microsoft Works’. Does it work for you?

  33.

  Pandemic

  adjective and noun

  RELATING TO A DISEASE AFFECTING A WHOLE PEOPLE OR REGION, USUALLY THE WHOLE WORLD; ANY CONTAGION THAT SPREADS THROUGHOUT AN ENTIRE POPULATION, COUNTRY, OR THE GLOBE, CROSSING INTERNATIONAL BOUNDARIES

  USAGE

  The World Health Organisation declared COVID-19 a global pandemic, thus distinguishing it from an epidemic, which would have occurred in a smaller region.

  The word pandemic is derived from the Greek pandemos, meaning ‘pertaining to all people; public, common’, in turn made up of pan (‘all’) and demos (‘people’). An epidemic spreads rapidly and extensively by infection, but a pandemic threatens everyone, not just in a limited region, and causes a high level of mortality. So the Ebola virus, though it killed thousands of people, remained confined to West Africa and never reached pandemic status. And when what we today know as COVID-19 seemed to be confined to China, experts spoke of it as an epidemic; when it crossed borders and affected all countries, the WHO labelled it a pandemic.

  Coronavirus is by no means the only pandemic the world has had to cope with. Influenza has often reached pandemic proportions, most notoriously in 1918–19, when the misnamed ‘Spanish flu’ killed more people around the world than both World Wars combined! There have been several lethal pandemics of flu—one million died in the ‘Russian flu’ in 1889–90, the ‘Asian Flu’ killed 2 million in 1956–58, and the ‘Hong Kong Flu’ accounted for 1 million fatalities in 1968. There have been alerts in recent years about avian or bird flu, swine flu, the 2003 severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), and other threats of pandemics that have placed the world on high alert.

  Cholera, bubonic plague and smallpox have produced deadly pandemics in the past. None, perhaps, has been as persistent, devastating and recurrent as smallpox, which killed between 300 to 500 million people in its 12,000-year existence—a much higher proportion of the world population in earlier times—and whose eradication by the 1970s is one of the truly great medical achievements of humankind.

  HIV/AIDS, because it spread around the world and caused 36 million fatalities since 1981, can be called a pandemic. Cholera
no longer is thought of as a contender, but what is known as the Sixth Cholera Pandemic was: it originated in India where it killed over 800,000, before spreading to the Middle East, North Africa, Eastern Europe and even the USA, where it caused the last American outbreak of cholera in 1910–1911.

  The most feared pandemic scourge of humanity in ancient and mediaeval times was, of course, the Plague. The Bubonic Plague of 1346–53 lasted seven years and killed an incredible 75–200 million people, out of a world population perhaps three times that size. It ravaged Europe, Africa and Asia, travelling around the world most probably on rat-infested merchant ships. Its toll was so widespread and horrific that it was known as the ‘Black Death’. But there had been earlier bubonic plagues, though labelling them pandemics might suggest a certain European ethnocentricity, since Europe was all that people knew of the world in those days. The ‘Plague of Justinian’ in 541–42 AD wiped out some 25 million people, which was half the population of Europe, killed up to a quarter of the population of the Eastern Mediterranean and devastated the city of Constantinople, where 40 per cent of the population died. Even earlier, in 165 AD, the ‘Plague of Galen’, also known as the ‘Antonine Plague’, affected Asia Minor, Egypt, Greece and Italy. Historians attempting to understand what happened surmise that it must have been either smallpox or measles, brought back to Rome by soldiers returning from battle in Mesopotamia. Whatever it was, this plague killed over 5 million people and decimated the Roman army.

  Pandemics, of course, have become more frequent in our times because of increased global travel and integration, population growth and environmental damage. The increasing emergence of viral disease from animals, whether because of the eating habits of some humans or as a result of environmental deformations, has seen an increase in zoonotic diseases, in which pathogens cross the boundary between animal-to-animal transmission and affect human beings as well by transforming into diseases that are transmitted from human to human.

  Pandemics cause significant economic, social and political disruption, prompting the international community, notably through the World Health Organisation, to undertake efforts to prepare to mitigate the impact of pandemics. There are still many gaps and shortfalls related to the timely detection of disease, availability of basic care, tracing of the spread of infection, the quarantine and isolation procedures adopted by various countries, and major challenges of global coordination and response, as well as the mobilization of resources to fight pandemics, particularly in poor developing countries.

  The worst pandemic threats are those that transmit easily and rapidly between humans, have long asymptomatic infectious periods (which means that infected persons can infect others while their infections are still undetected), and are easily confused with lesser threats (a cold or a flu, for instance, in the case of COVID-19). Others, like Nipah virus and bird flu, are deemed a moderate global threat since they have not demonstrated sustained human-to-human transmission. Developing countries are always the most at risk, because of their higher levels of malnutrition, insufficient access to good medical care and higher rates of disease transmission, as well as lower medical infrastructure capacity, less access to modern medical techniques and greater density of population.

  The world is going through a severe pandemic right now in 2020, in which relatively developed countries seem to be the worst sufferers. We will have to wait and see if that remains the case for long, and what lessons we must derive from it.

  34.

  Panglossian

  adjective

  FOOLISHLY AND UNREALISTICALLY OPTIMISTIC, ESPECIALLY IN THE FACE OF UNRELIEVED HARDSHIP OR ADVERSITY

  USAGE

  ‘Ayushman Bharat’ is essentially a Panglossian idea,

  a policy based on wishful thinking.

  Panglossian is derived from Pangloss, an incurably optimistic character who was a philosopher and tutor in Voltaire’s 1758 work Candide, and who famously declared that ‘all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds’.

  Voltaire clearly did not intend us to be enamoured of this approach, since Dr Pangloss was old, pedantic and deluded, maintaining his misguided beliefs even after experiencing great suffering. His name itself is a clue to the playwright’s view of the old man, since Pangloss is derived from the Greek pan, all, and glossa, tongue or language, so suggesting empty talk or shallow glibness.

  In India, the ruling party spokesmen are obliged to be professional Panglossians, putting the finest spin even on the most unsavoury acts of the government, seeing a glowing silver lining in every economic or political cloud. It is impossible to get an official voice to ever acknowledge how bad things actually are; they will tell you they are actually fine, good and heading irresistibly for better.

  It is hard to escape using this word when one reads the Modi government’s embarrassing attempts to positively gloss every misfortune currently afflicting our nation. To respond to the healthcare crisis confronting the least fortunate sections of Indian society by announcing an insurance scheme that covers the entire population only for the most routine maladies, and budgets a fraction of a percentage of what the scheme will actually cost if all the sick laid claim to benefits under it, is Panglossian in the extreme. So is suggesting that, just as the Mahabharata war was won in eighteen days, the war against the coronavirus would be won in twenty-one (as the PM did when the first lockdown

  was announced).

  The recent coronavirus crisis witnessed more Panglossians in the governmental ranks: several first assured us there was no problem, that Indians were immune to the virus and that the summer heat would destroy the contagion if they weren’t. When this turned out not to be true, the line changed to how masterfully the government had handled the crisis and how India—despite manifest inadequacies of testing, unavailability of equipment from ventilators to protective gear for healthcare professionals, poor hospital facilities and a faltering economy ill-prepared to buffer the shocks endured by businesses and workers—would triumph easily over the crisis. Many announcements by the government about ‘flattening the curve’ looked decidedly Panglossian when the curve continued to climb three months into the lockdown. Clapping and banging plates at 5 p.m. signalled our optimism, and our premature triumphalism. As the numbers passed the half-million mark with no sign of the crisis easing or the ‘peak’ having been reached, and as a prominent businessman looked at the economic indicators and declared, ‘we flattened the wrong curve’, it became clear that a lot of the earlier official projections were Panglossian indeed.

  Some professions require chronic Panglossians. Public relations and marketing are two fields that lend themselves to such behaviour: no one sells a product, or promotes a project or a company, by expressing gloom about its prospects, even when these seem dire to external observers. Sports is another such domain: captains and coaches are perennially Panglossian about their teams’ chances, even when they have just been comprehensively thrashed in their previous match. ‘We will win the next game,’ they bravely and confidently boast, even if no one else on the planet believes they have a hope in hell of doing so.

  Armies are the same: victory is always declared to be imminent, if only to keep up the morale of the troops on the front. George Orwell wrote movingly of how, in the Spanish Civil War, the Republican troops besieging the city of Huesca were told, ‘We’ll be home for Christmas.’ That proved Panglossian: Huesca never fell, and the only Republican soldiers who made it home did so on a stretcher, or in a coffin.

  35.

  Paracosm

  noun

  A DETAILED IMAGINARY WORLD CREATED INSIDE ONE’S MIND

  USAGE

  My little daughter spent much of her hours not merely daydreaming but conducting entire conversations

  and incidents in her own paracosm, with people

  and pets only she could see.

  Derived from Ancient Greek pará (‘beside, alongside’) and kósmos (‘world, universe’), paracosms are more common among imaginative children
than you can imagine. A paracosm is defined as a detailed imaginary or fantasy world, involving humans, animals, or imaginary creatures, often having its own geography, history and language, usually created and developed during childhood. As a child, sharing a bathtub with my toddler sisters, I used to invent a paracosm for the three of us and regale them with stories of adventures therein. As they grew older, I would pause in mid-story and challenge them to pick up where I had left off, so the story was completed collectively. Adults tend to outgrow their paracosms, but some cling on to them, for psychological and personal reasons.

  So it is not only novelists like J.R.R. Tolkien in his Lord of the Rings or J.K. Rowling in her Harry Potter books who have created convincing imaginary worlds peopled with their own characters, clans (Tolkien’s Hobbits, Rowling’s Muggles), traditions, geographical features, historical events, invented language and even habits and prejudices—including, in some cases, incorporating real-world characters and conventions. Many ordinary individuals without any literary talent have created them too.

  A child’s imaginary paracosm is very real to her, and she has a profound and complex relationship with it; one friend’s son claimed his best friend was a girl who for the rest of us didn’t exist, but he spoke of her as if he was completely serious about his accounts of exchanges and experiences they had shared. Though adults are often bewildered by the conviction a child shows in her subjective universe, it can often continue beyond childhood.