But why do people go through this silly game of clichés? Why do people state the things that stare in our face and singe our senses? They don’t keep a board near Niagara Falls saying that its Niagara. And nobody has mistaken it for Mt. Vesuvius.
But India, people do. It is written below the picture of Mahatma Gandhi, at his museum no less, Mahatma Gandhi. If it is not going to be the Mahatma’s picture in his museum, who then will be hanging from the walls? Dayanidhi Maran in drags?
Well, it is obvious; People like to tell the obvious. Many modern-day TV anchors specialise in the art of stating the obvious. ‘What is the mood out there?’ a chirpy young thing will trill from the studios to a reporter who will be at the site of a major train accident.
She could not be expecting the people to breaking out into a bhangra where two trains had calamitously run into each other. But that doesn’t prevent the CYTs from posing the said question.
Most of these daft questions or observations are made in over anxiety or misplaced enthusiasm to say something. That certainly was the case when Ravi Shastri decreed, with the authority that comes only to those who have played the game at the highest level, ‘that is a fine cover drive through the covers’.
Of course, Shastri was outdone by another worthy who said ‘there was no one covering the gap on the onside. He saw that gap and he hit through that gap.’ In the commentary box it is regular to say ‘they take one single’. Another former Indian opener once described Steve Harmison as a fast bowler who bowls fast. He was certainly precise in his observation and nobody can accuse of him laborious exaggeration.
But it takes special skills to say the obvious with fun and humour. Asked by someone to describe in one compact sentence the digestive process of Indians, a wag said: ‘It starts with the right hand and ends with the left hand’. Well, obvious isn’t?
