A troll in so many words

Shashi Tharoor is a man who wears many hats as a writer. This former UN diplomat, who now serves in Parliament, has written novels, essays, biographies, short stories, newspaper columns as well as non-fiction books on history, religion and public policy. The range is astonishing, and certainly worthy of applause, despite one’s subjective opinion about his mastery of each genre. His latest book, Tharoorosaurus, functions as a dictionary and encyclopedia on the one hand, and as a book of political commentary on the other.

In the preface, the author reveals that the unusual title was coined by his publisher Meru Gokhale at Penguin India. The book grew out of a conversation “in the rear seat of a taxicab” on their way to an event at the Jaipur Literature Festival. The concept is smart, interesting and marketable. It banks on Tharoor’s public image as a politician whose vocabulary is made up of quaint, often intimidating words, which find their way into his tweets and speeches. This erudition can be frustrating for people who cannot make head or tail of his utterances.

Tharoorosaurus is a collection of 53 short essays, each of which covers the meaning of a specific word, gives an example of its usage, traces the etymology behind it, and provides anecdotes that are either informative or entertaining. There is a backstory accompanying the book’s title as well. It takes off from the author’s surname and combines it with ‘tyrannosaurus’ — the name of a dinosaur — and ‘thesaurus’, a book that people use to look up synonyms of words. To his credit, Tharoor delivers what he promises.

The tone for the book is set by a cover that is both playful and provocative. Illustrated by Mihir Joglekar and designed by Devangana Dash, it shows the author as a giant creature who is half-human and half-beast. His head is affixed to the body of a dinosaur. This striking image, reminiscent of mythological characters, fits perfectly because many of the words chosen by Tharoor are either too archaic for everyday conversation or too scary due to their spelling. However, he does include a few contemporary words that are commonly used on social media. 

Tharoorosaurus is an excellent resource for lovers of the English language, readers who want to expand their lexicon, and those who relish trivia. However, the author admits that this is not a scholarly enterprise. He says, “I am neither a trained linguist nor philologist, and I have no pretensions to being a qualified English teacher either. It is rather the work of someone who loves words, has loved them all his life, and whose cherished childhood memories revolve around word games with a father who was even more obsessed with them than I am.”

One of the words featured in this book is “agathokakological”, which means ‘consisting of both good and evil’. Its origin is attributed to the British poet Robert Southey, who enjoyed making up new words. Tharoor says that the epic Mahabharata has heroes who are “not perfect idealized figures but agathokakological human beings with desires and ambitions who are prone to lust, greed and anger and capable of deceit, jealousy and unfairness”. His own book, The Great Indian Novel (1989), is an inspired retelling of the Mahabharata.

Tharoor has a grand time commenting on these human frailties, especially in the political arena with which he is intimately acquainted. He introduces readers to the word “snollygoster”, which was originally used for “a monster, half-reptile, half-bird, that preyed on both children and chickens” but now describes “a rotten person who is driven by greed and self-interest.” The author reserves it for politicians who get elected on an anti-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) platform but eventually switch sides and join the BJP when it suits their interests.

Another essay that deserves mention is woven around the word “vigilante”, which refers to “a member of a self-appointed group of citizens who undertake law enforcement actions without legal authority, often involving physical violence against an accused or suspected law-breaker.” The Gulabi Gang, led by women in Uttar Pradesh to support victims of domestic violence, would make an apt example. Tharoor, however, points to gau-rakshak samitis “intercepting and assaulting anyone they suspect to be transporting cattle illegally for slaughter.”

The word “vigilante” apparently comes from the Spanish word for “watchman”, which in turn originates from the Latin “vigilantem”, meaning “watchful, anxious, careful.” According to Tharoor, vigilantes justify their existence by highlighting the failures of the criminal justice system. He says, “Vigilantes normally see the government as incapable of enforcing the law; in India they often claim the police are either corrupt or not energetic enough to tackle crimes like cow slaughter, so they feel a ‘moral obligation’ to take the law into their own hands.”

He loses no opportunity to throw in a few jibes directed at his opponents. The word “claque”, for instance, refers to “a group of people hired to applaud.” It is easy to guess who the author is hinting at when he writes, “No one thought much of his speech, except the usual claque of party hacks who applauded his every line vigorously.” If you ask him, all political parties have claques but some have more than others because “they can afford to pay more for the rent-a-crowd audiences their leaders need to feel encouraged and emboldened by.”

Is Tharoor being a troll here? That is a question for readers to mull over. As mentioned in the book, this word with its antecedents in Scandinavian folklore is now used to describe a person whose intention is “to insult, offend or abuse his targets in order to provoke a response for the troll’s own amusement or to score political points.” Mission accomplished!