I  greatly admired the late P V Narasimha Rao because of his unique linguistic accomplishments. He was enviably fluent in several Indian languages and nearly as many foreign ones. Not many are so endowed, but a few try to show off their skill in a certain tongue of which, in fact, they have only a smattering or none at all, like our friend in Lakshadweep. Ah, Lakshadweep, the palm bedecked, coral islands, with white sandy beaches!

During his premiership, Rajiv Gandhi had holidayed in Lakshadweep. As he toured the tiny isles, feasting his eyes on the picturesque archipelago, he met the islanders and talked to them leisurely. He kept them in good humour. Malayalam being the language of nearly all islands, an interpreter was inevitably present. So, though Gandhi spoke in Hindi, they understood him.

But, there was a man amongst them who seemed to render the interpreter redundant. As if he was well at home in it, he tried to reply to Gandhi in Hindi. The PM looked very pleased, for here was someone from a non-Hindi speaking area, with a relish for the national language.

But what this Hindi enthusiast actually did was to merely repeat Gandhi's questions, rather than answer them. For instance, when Gandhi asked him, “Aap kaise ho?” he replied, “Aap kaise ho.” “Sabh teek tak?” asked Gandhi. “Sabh teek tak”, replied the man, and so on and so forth. But his repetitions were not pregnant with an interrogative tone. This led his fellow-islanders, to whom Hindi was Greek, to be impressed by his “mastery over that language!”

Suddenly, from nowhere a small boy came running. With a curious touch of bewilderment in them, his eyes ran over those present, and he was quite delighted to spot this man in the crowd. He rushed to him, climbed into his lap and then clung to him, crying “Acha!” – daddy in Malayalam.

Though the prime minister did not know the meaning of the word, he deduced that the boy was the man’s son. Yet, he asked him, may be, to acknowledge the boy’s presence, “Aap ka beta?” And the man’s reply? You guessed it – “Aap ka beta”. Gandhi looked about him instinctively and was relieved, for the last person he wanted to hear what the man had said was fortunately out of earshot.