Witerati | Phir bhi ‘delulu’ hai Hindustani

Saawan season is seeing deluge of other sorts, be it the protest meme fest raining on social media or Gen Z lingo lording it in Parliament portals

Saawan may be taking its own sweet time to trumpet its temper tantrums. Ah, but figuratively speaking, rain mode is pretty much in full flow elsewhere.

The student protest has not only stirred political debate but also introduced a fresh Gen Z vocabulary into parliamentary discourse.

First, it was the deluge of a student protest at Jantar Mantar. Then, in the aftermath of the protest, which gave netas and abhinetas much to chew on, it is raining Gen Z vocabulary in the portals of Parliament. Perhaps to project how ‘with-it’ they are with Young India’s influencers and social media scriptwriters, MPs debating the anti-exam leak Bill in the monsoon session made it a point to shower their pontifications with Gen Z lingo.

From “delulu” (delusional, detached from reality) to solulu (solution), it rained and reigned the ‘cockroach’ protest vocabulary from vocal cords hitherto more practiced in parliamentary potshots of the unmentionable or unfathomable sort. Millennial slang — “clocked it” to “vaste-guna-huiya” — mirrored the mood of the moment among MPs to suitably set Parliament’s monsoon mood.

MPs & millennial slang

In the Lower House where raining slurs is a way of life for some slang-savvy parliamentarians, this shower of Gen Z shorthand sounded more like a macro masterclass. In a parliamentary climate that has often seen showers of expletives that had to be expunged — jumlajeevi (hypocrite) to tanashah (dictator) to baal buddhi (juvenile-minded) — this raining of delulu-solulu shorthand seemed rather refreshing, a tad tame and spelt an upgradation of the socio-cultural syntax of the nation’s policymakers.

Any rain or shower in moderation is a pleasant harbinger, so would vouch committed climate watchers, sociological or meteorological.

Talking of dictionary monopoly though, geography got overtaken by jingoism. ‘Honolulu’ may not have anticipated such an upstaging of its monopoly by this rain of rhyming clones. Google search algorithms may have spelt an unwelcome upset for ‘Honolulu’ when along came ‘delulu’.

The curious case of dictionary aur delulu ki prem kahani.

Of ‘delulu’ & deluge

In this season of delulu and deluge, memory harks back to an August flash flood of several summers ago. We live in times of Trump-like mood swings manifested by the monsoon. Times when torrential rain tosses our desi Beverly Hills-clone condos and modernised metropolises into infinity swimming pools that drive citizens to lament that they would be better off investing in speedboats than in Fords and Audis. This aspirational pragmatism for speedboat living perhaps has a precursor in that August afternoon decades ago.

Back then, in the early nineties, climate still resembled a well-mannered dandy, full of airs but not given to too many temper tantrums.

But when that fateful 1993 day had dawned upon our unsuspecting “City Beautiful”, all hell had broken loose. Those were the initial days of life as an intern in a leading newspaper and interns made up most of the morning shift. That dark day, the morning shift had resembled an endless night.

It stretched into the afternoon shift, spilled into the evening shift and finally into an almost nightmarish night shift, what with the heavens refusing rest or respite from the wrath that they poured.

Alarm bells had sounded when the spotlight ticker had blinked the ground reality on the towering news billboard outside. It was indeed the deluge. Diabolic, deathly.

How to reach home — that had been the panic and prayer on every lip. Speedboats were a distant dream.

What had finally come to the rescue of the scared, stranded newsroom staff that unforgettable night were the gargantuan newspaper supply trucks.

Technology has since upgraded life over the decades. Alas, one burst of wrath from the skies, one bolt of natural calamity even today and life looks to be stranded still in that long ago lifeboat-longing moment of young adulthood.

Digital India appears to have endowed us with wings, but, symbolically, not always with solid, sturdy feet or spiked soles—of infrastructural support—to dig in and navigate when the ground gets slippery.

The curious case of ‘Amok in the Clouds’.

chetnakeer@yahoo.com