New Delhi: Congressional top leader Shashi Tharoor, whose penchant for dark, multi-syllable words is well known, received a strange request on Sunday from author Chetan Bhagat, who asked the word magician to praise him using “big words.”
To Bhagat’s delight, Tharoor quickly obeyed and used the choicest words – “sesquipedal” to “limpid insight” and so on – from his voluminous vocabulary, famously called ‘Tharoorosaurus’, in his tweet to the author.
It all started after Tharoor, 64, took to Twitter and praised Bhagat for his Times of India article, titled “Young People Need to Close Their Phones and Ask About the Economy.”
The congressional deputy from Thiruvananthapuram called Bhagat’s opinion piece “magnificent” and with a “clear message”.
“Splendid article by @chetan_bhagat on everything that ails our country and what we must do about it. Chetan’s great virtue is the simplicity and frankness of his writing. His message is clear and I hope his fans in government will act accordingly, “he tweeted. Tharoor, a best-selling author himself.
Surprised by Tharoor’s lavish praise, Bhagat, who said he will frame the tweet, asked the congressional leader to use “big words” to praise him.
“Ok I still can’t get over this. @ShashiTharoor has praised @chetanbhagat. I’m floating. Just a request sir, next time you can use some big words to praise me, like only you can do. Excellent is good But a big one would really make my day! ”Bhagat tweeted.
Soon, the diplomat-turned-politician replied: “Sure, @chetan_bhagat! You are clearly not Sesquipedan or given to the rodomontade. Your ideas are not adorned with tortuous convolutions and are expressed without ostentation. I appreciate the limpid insight of the column of today”.
The entertaining Twitter exchange gave way to a series of funny memes and tweets.
“Google can’t translate either,” Raja Ram Singh tweeted.
“Enjoyed this @ShashiTharoor or chetan_bhagat may write another book ‘The Fourth Mistake of My Life,'” Dominic Savio tweeted.
“After so many days I needed a dictionary # shashitharoor # chetanbhagat,” Mayur Shinde tweeted.
BroJack tweeted, “12 years of upbringing at ICSE, only to not even be able to find out if he is speaking for or against Chetan Bhagat.”
To the unspoken, ‘sesquipedal’ means that a word is polysyllabic, ‘rodomontade’ is boastful, ‘convolutions’ means complex, ‘ostentation’ means to be pretentious, ‘limpid’ is clear, and ‘insight’ must be shrewd.
In 2017, Tharoor’s tweet, with words like “maddening mess of distortions,” made headlines and became the buzzword on the internet.
His latest book, aptly titled “Tharoorosaurus,” is a collection of 53 words, one from each letter of the alphabet.
…
