Simbly a mumble yatra

HYDERABAD: It’s high noon and Sonia Gandhi’s on a vote hunt. Far away from the heat and dust of north Indian politics, this is a different terrain.
As such the Congress president’s Hindi is a shade tortured and text bookish. Now, in Telugu heartland, English is her only hope. Even here, she fumbles. Under the grilling Anantapur sun, she wades through a crop of sunflower and approaches a clump of women.She reaches out to them, but is stumped for she can’t connect. There are no interpreters and her Italian-sounding English makes no sense to them. She looks around for someone to bail her out. But PCC chief D Srinivas and former CLP leader Y S Rajasekhara Reddy are nudged out of the frontline by security.
After a torturous wait, Srinivas and Reddy surface. Mrs G connects. She hears a sorry tale of a family tormented by drought.
In a sense this episode typifies Sonia’s visit to AP. While she tries hard to connect, her voice is lost. She tries not to come across as a North Indian leader who came calling. And, for this, she harks back to history. “Andhra Pradesh always supported the Congress when it was in trouble. I’m sure you’ll not let me down this time.� All along, she speaks in the Queen’s Language. Interpreters do a Telugu take.
She invokes Indira and Rajiv and explains her family’s traditional links with the state. Medak returned her mother-in-law to parliament in 1978-80. “I see this as my native place,� she tells her audiences. Her diction: Indiraesque. Her pauses: Indiraesque. Her tone: Shrill.
In Nandyal, she got a response on Wednesday. Tumultuous crowds turned out to hear her. But, once again, her oratory let her down. Perhaps aware of the insurmountable language barrier, she kept her address far too brief — 14 minutes to be precise. Somehow, even that sounded more like a Bharat darshan piece, where she touched upon contentious issues, such as farmers’ suicides, fleetingly. Chandrababu Naidu didn’t find a mention. For the Congress, it was a 50-minute act, very uncharacteristic of political rallies in this part of the world.
On Thursday, she travelled through city roads, waving out of her car and stopping by at places. In the morning rush, when people were heading for work, the Congress cavalcade ended up being more of an irritant.