Those who have heard Navjot Singh Sidhu have heard no more because he is infamous for speaking without taking a breath in between lest you interrupt him. Much like his television appearances he likes to sprinkle his day to day conversation with similar linguistic excellence. Perhaps the idiomatic brilliance is not even possible without practice on a daily or rather hourly basis.
I had opportunity to meet Mr. Sidhu in course of my work as a political consultant. The service that I was offering him was interesting to him but the only problem was that deal could not close because I was supposed to the selling part for which I had to do some talking. Mr Sidhu was however in his “Sixer-Sidhu” form where every delivery that I bowled went for a six. I had three sittings with him and it looked like it was going nowhere. Due to his busy schedule the meetings were being held at unearthly hours of 10:00 pm or later and to drive half the way across Delhi to speak to a possible client and coming back after hearing him was getting on my nerves.
Before the 4th meeting, I decided that I had had enough and something has to be done. In my garage-cum-office there was a half-empty Vodka bottle which we had used to get the right levels of inebriation to loosen up during the baraat at my brother’s wedding. Before starting for the meeting I had two neat large pegs from it and drove to meet the gentleman.
And speak I did. Putting examples and gyaan inline. For once, Sh. Sidhu was the audience. When I finished Sidhu ji said “Yaar tu bolta to bahut badhiya hain” (You speak well, dude!)
I did get that assignment after that. It did not pan out very well in the end but that is a different story altogether. During the course of the work, I got the opportunity to travel with him from Amritsar to Delhi. For six hours, there were sidhuisms from his side all along. He narrated verbatim his parliamentary triumph after which the Speaker congratulated him on his gift. I dozed off somewhere in the middle with a smile on my face which bore the satisfaction of silencing Sidhu, atleast once in his life.
