My, my. So courteous and dignified. In the last five years watching Parliament telecasts meant just one thing: unparliamentary behaviour — sometimes especially for TV. But last week, everyone was like boy scouts and girl guides. Beaming smiles at each other like headlights of oncoming vehicles; greeting each other like birthday cards. Why, it came to a point when they were even thumping the table for each other (well, maybe it didn’t come to that). Yes, our representatives behaved with a grace and graciousness — not a cross word between them - that we have come not to expect when we tune into the Lok Sabha. Will it last? Unlikely, but for now the breaking news is that Parliament was not rocked by clashes but that Parliament was rocking.

Clearly, Alan Wilkins is not conversant with the latest in popular cant. On Saturday evening as Chris Gayle swept away the Australian team at the Twenty20 something called the World Cup, Wilkins exclaimed: “This is an Australian ship which is rocking”. Shipwrecked is more like it. As Ian Chappell rightly observed, cricket commentary wordplay must change in order to do Twenty20 justice. This, after he caught himself remarking that Gayle had “just played himself in after scoring 53 off 26 balls”! Later, on Aaj Tak Sunny Gavaskar experienced a language malfunction. Asked about Bangladesh’s chances against India, the maestro, speaking in Hindi, said India were favorites but the “minnows’ had a chance. Minnows? Even those who speak English would be at dictionary.com looking up the meaning of the word; for Aaj Tak’s audience it was lost in pronunciation.

... contd.