Salman Rushdie’s latest short story, The
Old Man in the Piazza, is a moving plea for bringing elegance back
to our public discourses. And truth too.
It is not the elegance of total assent that is desired. Everyone saying “Yes” to
everything all the time is not a utopia. Language sits sulking in a corner of
that utopia in Rushdie’s story. She endures the obsequiousness of all the yes-people
for five long years and then, unable to bear the vulgarity of such invertebrate
bhakti, stands up and lets out “a long, piercing shriek”. Language rebels
against the total assent.
Assent is not a virtue, except in religion maybe. When the
leader says that the moon is made of ancient Hindustani paneer, all the bhakts asserting
their assent in unison is not the beauty of human life. Diverse are the beauties
of language. Shakespeare and Kalidasa have their own places in her kingdom.
[Language is presented as a woman in Rushdie’s story.] Vikram Seth’s
inter-religious lovers can have their kiss in the temple of language without
being shrieked out by the toxin of bigotry.
Dalliance is not what the lady language longs
for either. Rushdie’s story shows young and handsome “Byronic creatures” paying
shallow homage to language reminding us of the “bestselling” writers of our
times. Language allows them “to ravish her in private”. Language has her own
promiscuity. Her morals are loose.
Rushdie’s old man is watching all these. He is judging too. The eerie
shriek of language works some miracle. The people open up debates. There is dissent now. Freedom of
expression is rediscovered. The old man in the piazza becomes an official judge
between arguing people. He decides that the earth is not flat and that there is
God, and Heaven and Hell, and so on.
Slowly the old man’s judgments move from rightness to rectitude. “No longer
willing simply to answer yes-or-no questions, he seeks to establish which of
the disputing parties is the more virtuous.” He sometimes passes the verdict in
favour of a plaintiff who is undeniably in the wrong but is a lesser evil than
the rival.
Language sits brooding. This is not what she had expected
from freedom of expression. Expression can have beauty in spite of infinite
dissent. It should have. Language longs to be liberated, to unfold her endless
beauty, to dance like a peacock…
Beauty is not loud. Not moral. Not religious. Beauty is
subtle, gentle, mellow. Why has our language lost all that?
PS. Thanks to Manu S for drawing my attention to Rushdie’s
story.
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