What's Sanskrit for 'awesome'?

Priya Kumari Smriti Irani

Namaskaraam, namo namah. Put simply, how are you, madam?

I spoke with Narendrabhai last evening and he's a thoda angryam, sorry, gussam, actually krodham with you. Frankly can you blame him?

Illustration / Amit Bandre

Every time he plans something lavish on the world stage, you manage to put a spanner in the works.

I mean here is a man, who has spent more time out of the country, in just his first 150 days in office. All this just to better India's image internationally. Why do you think he went to Japan or invited Xi Jinping, the Chinese premier to Gandhinagar and fed him undhyu? You think it was merely to play the bongo drums in Tokyo or to get the Chinese to sign off on a 30 billion dollar commitment ?

No madam, the master plan was to see whether either Japanese or Chinese could become the third language in Kendriya Vidyalayas across the country.

Why do you think he didn't shake Nawaz Sharif's hand at the SAARC conference? No way was it about the fact that Pakistan continues to violate LoC agreements.

He just wanted to avoid the Pakistani PM's embarrassing request to introduce Urdu as the ‘teesri bhasha' in apna Bharat.

Madam, Modisaab will be heading to Germany shortly, now that he has a Schengen visa. And you have just unceremoniously thrown German out as the third language. How do you expect him to react when the Bundeskanzler (Chancellor) asks him, "Herr Modi, waas sees ze sird language being saught in zee zchools in your caaantry. What ees zis Zanskrit?"

Kumari Smriti, how will Modiji answer this Gestapo type question? I mean, our PM is trying to move us forward at a speed of 200 mph into a space age future and you're taking us back 2000 years.

I stupidly thought, maybe you flung out German, to replace it with another European language. Like French or Spanish. Chalo, even Gujarati would have been cool, considering your boss is from that state. But no, you choose a dialect that has its roots in the Rig Veda.

Explain to me how today's youth can truly benefit from a language that traces its linguistic ancestry back to
Proto-Indo-Iranian?

How will Sanskrit help a guy or girl get a job? At least with German he can join Siemens or Bajaj Allianz. What are his chances with this extinct language?

And crucially, how are the young supposed to communicate on social media? Or Whatsapp? Or on SMS?

They have their own lingo, crafted through various stages of Attention Deficient Disorder.

Take the word ‘awesome'. Far too long for them to type out, right? - so it has been shortened to ‘awesum' and lately to ‘ossum'. Are you now recommending it gets lengthened to ‘awesomemum'?

Kumari Smriti Irani, at this rate Narendra Modi is going to have to re-invite Mark Zuckerberg back to India to launch Facebookum and Whatsappam.

Okay Frau Irani. Auf Wiedersehen.

Rahul da Cunha is an adman, theatre director/playwright, photographer and traveller. Reach him at rahuldacunha62 @gmail.com
The views expressed in this column are the individual's and don't represent those of the paper.