If You Follow An Elephant, Click The Like Button On Your Torch

At Random Rubble, the farm, an enthralling addition to my vocabulary is the utterly delectable phrase, “One tarah looju”.  Now, being the studious, researchy sort who likes to get to the root of the deeper questions of Life (such as, Why are there so many certified idiots on Whatsapp groups?), I embarked on the project to enrich Society’s vocabulary and get to the bottom of it (the phrase.  Not to the bottom of society, which will not be a pleasing sight in daytime). For a long time, I had no clue on what this laden-with-meaning phrase meant until the power went off one day at RR and a local electrician looked at the switchboard and told me that the problem was with the fewju which was looju.   

Tarah, of course, means ‘like’ and it’s only fair that everyone and his cow use it, since the younger gen in the city say Like whenever they say anything (about which deeper question of Life, I have, like, published papers. This you, like, know).

Ananda, my indispensable farmer, friend, philosopher and guided missile, uses this phrase to refer to anyone he thinks is – in his immortal words – ‘mental’.  Which is much of the rest of humanity who has views that are below his exacting standards (I almost certainly fit neatly into that category, but he has not called me One Tarah Looju yet.  Maybe because I pay him.  Call this protection money). 

There is a broad and generous brush to the usage of this priceless label as well.  A couple of years ago, a prominent male elephant in our area named Makhna was in musth and it was promptly agreed by all present and voting that he – the elephant – was One Tarah Looju.  And hence to be avoided by anyone, unless that anyone was…, well, you guessed it and you are getting better, One Tarah Looju as well.  

But Ramappa, my neighbour, is known to follow an elephant in the middle of the night on foot, shining his torch at the elephant’s backside (which, you will rightly argue, is unlikely to increase his body temperature, if that is Ramappa’s admirable objective) so this luminary, this shining light of Modern Civilisation has been regrettably labelled One Tarah Looju as well. 

Others – most of whom do not follow elephants on foot in the middle of the night - can be One Tarah Looju too.  Such as a distant neighbour, an overweight, opinionated windbag who thinks no end of himself (given his size, it admittedly takes a while to find the end).    Ramappa claims to have seen this One Tarah Looju stalwart with a cap on and nothing else under the broadly liberal definition of clothing, which visual has me awake at night with a torch and quivering, Makhna-the-Musthful-Misanthrope be damned. 

Our larger Society forms opinions on grave topics like One Tarah Looju generally after the third peg of Red Knight Deluxe - courtesy Tasmac - has lit a flame in the small intestine and is radiating in seven unspecified directions.  In such senior leadership conclaves in our village, the following sub-species are classified as One Tarah Looju: 

- people who spend more money than is prudent, in Society’s opinion

- people who do not spend more money than is prudent

- people who use a tractor

- people who do not use a tractor

- people who don’t work

- people who work

- people

You get the picture.  Hopefully. 

If not, there is a chance – a slender one, just a sliver of a ghost of one, a fractional proclivity – that you may be One Tarah Looju.