Modi’s speeches: alliterations, rhymes, acronyms and word play
Modi’s speeches are truly mesmerising, with their alliterations, rhymes, acronyms and word play. It is impossible to match their awesomeness, but here’s a shaky stab at it:
‘Democracy, demography, demand greatest strengths of India’; “5Ts — talent, tradition, tourism, trade and technology”; “P2G2 — Pro-people, good governance: Narendra Modi
Modi’s speeches are truly mesmerising, with their alliterations, rhymes, acronyms and word play. It is impossible to match their awesomeness, but here’s a shaky stab at it:
Brothers and sisters,
When I look at this huge assembly today, I am reminded of the three asses that have made our country great — assertion, assurances and asses. We have always asserted our faith in democracy, given many assurances to our citizens and counted the people as our greatest asses. Eh? Not asses? Arses? Oh, ok, make that assets.
Friends, what are the assets we need for bringing prosperity to the country? I would call them the six ‘ets’— markets, budgets, targets, rockets, toilets and poets. We need free markets, tight government budgets, high targets, rockets against enemies, toilets for the poor. But you will ask me, why do we need a poet? Let me tell you a story. I once visited the home of a poet in Ahmedabad and he recited this wonderful poem: ‘There was once a man on a toilet/Who had an enormous budget/He filled his bucket/And hit the target/ And the market went up like a rocket’. We need poets who can inspire us by writing stirring lines like this.
What is our difference with the Congress? Let me give you examples. While we offer insights, all they do is incite. When we look at the whole, all they see is a big hole. While we want to go higher, they offer themselves for hire. They are momentary, we are momentous. They extract, we explode. Umm…no…they extract, we exhort. We omit hot air, they emit it. We want to grow, but they only groan. They wreck, we reek. I mean they reek, we rock. We raise to the sky, they raze to the ground. They gibe, we jive. In Gujarat, we never worry, we’re always in a hurry and we export curry.
Let us now come to the acronyms. You know the importance of tea to us. I have told you before about IT, BT, ET — information technology, bio-technology and environmental technology. But did you know that a PYT (pretty young thing) was seen doing an ST (strip tease) on GT (Grand Trunk) road while reading HT (Hindustan Times)? Ha, ha, JT (Just Teasing). Why am I teasing you? JLT (Just Like That).
But there is also a dark side to tea. I am talking, of course, of dynasty, on which several evil political parties are founded. It goes with imbecility, absurdity and asininity, which, together with acidity, form what I call the terrible Ts.
For our farmers we must strengthen the F circle, from fertilisers to farm to food to fertiliser again. To build our defence forces we must focus on maximum rockets, minimum rackets. For the textile industry, I propose a policy of sheep to ship to shop to shape. For governance, we plan to move from P2 2 G2, or from petty politics to glorious gibberish. For education, our policy is Educ8 2B Gr8 — we will set up training institutes in texting 4U. And lastly, this country doesn’t want Acts, it wants actors.
This peach of a speech is now over. Thank you for that treacherous roar of applause. I mean thunderous roar, of course.
Manas Chakravarty is Consulting Editor, Mint
The views expressed by the author are personal
