When a Faux Pas Weds a Gaffe, It Births a Big Blunder

“When you swim, you don’t grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead, you relax and float, focusing on the importance of your breath”: Alan Wilson Watts.

What is a Faux Pas? It is a loan phrase from French, yet to be acclimatised to our Indish tongues. So even if it reads like Fox Pas, the actual pronunciation is Foh Pah! It literally translates to a ‘false step’; something like treading in the wrong direction, resulting in a social blunder.

What is a Gaffe? It is also a blunder causing embarrassment. I pronounced it as ‘gaafey’ thinking that the French letter ‘E’ should be articulated as ‘ey’. Apparently, it can be pronounced in several different ways and a silent ‘e’ makes it Gaff.

If I thought English was a but-put language, French is a ‘stress’ful one. Meaning, it is more evenly stressed, where only parts of a word are emphasised. Anyway, getting down to brass tacks, why am I suddenly quoting these phrases?

Maybe because our political scenario has been replete with these two foreign words. During speeches, when an off-the-cuff faux pas is committed, and it is so enticingly capable of being quoted out of context, not only is everyone quick to catch the nuanced mistake, they are ready to pounce on the blip of their political adversaries.

If a leader is gaffe prone, it automatically provides fodder to the opposite side. Even a well-intentioned but wrongly worded and jarring sentence, dampens an otherwise fine speech because if some are smooth speakers in English, they become an offender when they speak in Hindi.

And those who have the gift of the gab to hit back with alacrity, very often cannot speak a word without the aid of teleprompters. But these ‘galti se mistake ho jana’ is totally understandable; because to err is only human and all are entitled to their own share of bloopers.

But when a Faux Pas and a Gaffe get wedded online, it can create a Big B! One such Big Blunder took place recently. The IT cell, which prides itself in its efficiency, erred big time by posting a wrong video before schedule.

It was an incomplete one, supposed to have been made available only after the inauguration of the Parliament. The viral video was comical to watch as the ‘acts’ of an event yet to happen, was being publicised as if it had already taken place.

But because of this ‘blunder’ netizens got to have a peek into the PR’s professional Tool Kit. We got to see the style, the skill, the flamboyance and the grand scale of event management involved in image boosting.

Anyway, let’s now have a peek into the launching of ‘some’ colossal projects, which were completely avoidable.

1. The Demonetisation: It was perhaps the largest government-abetted money laundering scheme in history. In this theatre of the absurd failed to amuse the crowd. Rather it made them stand in queues and shed tears.

The rich grew richer from the haircuts they took on people’s hard-earned money, and a sophisticated and organised money laundering racket was born. And because of this catastrophic move, 3 lakh crore rupees in national income was also lost. Not to forget the 115 precious lives.

2. The SeaPlane: This fancy project ran into turbulence and had a crash landing. Even after the elaborate, impressive, upscale and fancy launch at the Sabarmati riverfront, its service, which claimed to be India's first, continued to remain erratic.

And in this land and water circus, the media kept up with its distractions so we wouldn’t notice the 13 Crores that had gone down the drain.

3. The GST: There were a lot of hits and misses but overall it failed on two major counts. It widened the rift between the Centre and the States. And it failed to achieve the ‘correct’ tax rates, which even the government and the GST Council believe are much below the desired levels.

4. Project ‘Cheetah’ : This is the saddest of them all. Rather than ‘reintroduction’, it was actually an introduction of an exotic species into the wild, which directly violates the Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972.

Launched with great fanfare, in just a span of a few months, it has already resulted in three tragic deaths. Everyone was warned of how adaptation to new habitat is always risky; how it is fraught with dangers and imponderables, and how acclimatisation is a long and arduous process.

So with the Cheetahs, also came a multiple of questions including the chances of their survival in India’s wild. Many wildlife experts and conservationists raised questions about the viability of the entire exercise.

While cheetahs existed in India, they were not genetically the same as the ones being brought from Namibia. Experts from South Africa warned that there has never been a successful reintroduction of cheetahs into an unfenced reserve in recorded history. It was already attempted 15 times in Africa but failed.

These were an alien/invasive species and to build a Cheetah population, we did not need events and photo shoots. What we needed was to first build a proper ecosystem around it. We needed commitment. We needed International support. And we needed constant monitoring.

Three more deaths have since been recorded. The South African wildlife expert Vincent van der Merwe, who was sadly on the mark with his prediction, has once again predicted even higher mortalities in the next few months.

The conservationist feels that it could happen once the cheetahs are let outside of their fenced enclosures, when they try to establish territories by coming face to face with leopards and tigers in the Kuno National Park. But. Some decisions are taken, just because!

I wonder though, what word or term one uses for such ‘executions’, where elaborate plans do not take off as predicted. Whatever you may call them, they are DEFINITELY not a Faux Pas. Or a Gaffe.

You may argue that any decision, even a wrong one, is better than no decision; or that sometimes it takes a wrong turn to get you to the right place. And yet. What if it is not just one decision? What if there are multiple wrong turns?

What if they not only lead to unpleasant results and disastrous consequences but also directly or indirectly affect innocent lives?

The best way to learn to fly is one wing at a time. If you decide to learn swimming instead, it should not be solely for the purpose of showing off your acrobatic skills.

You should learn how to swim so that you can pull yourself up in troubled waters. You should learn it, so that when others are in danger, you can rescue them as well. And in this life saving exercise there can be no room for faux pas. Or gaffes.

Nargis Natarajan is a writer. The views expressed here are her own.