By O Hammersmythe
Before you embark on this piece, let me serve you with that statutory disclaimer: This is a work of fiction; any resemblance to any person living or dead is purely coincidental. So let it be read in the spirit rather than in the letter, so that the ‘typos’ – as I am told they are called – the extra letter here, a missing vowel there may be good-naturedly overlooked and attributed to printer’s devil. And having put that out of the way, let us weigh anchor and sully forth on our long and meandering voyage. There’s a good reason why the bureaucracy created this Chimera called the Confidentiality Clause; (no relative of that corpulent Nordic whose ancestors reckoned, if they couldn’t win the battle of the bulge, they sure as hell could knock a vowel off the family name to appear leaner!) It’s a reason as convincing as Adam and Eve’s coming to be; or Noah’s building of the Ark, for that matter. This mythical beast was created by the administration to ensure its collective face didn’t turn the colour of the Tubby Man’s suit or the forbidden fruit or – to cut a long story short – the tape they love knotting everything with (knot possible) – when their superiors have read front page spreads bearing bylines of pesky reporters covering the political beast – oops – beat; caught the first potential typo before it bedeviled the text!
Having always wondered why people choose to call that edifice where the bureaucracy ostensibly spends all of its waking hours – even if that does sound like a contradiction in terms – the secretariat. The etymologist – one who loves investigating where words came from, not to be confused with the entomologist (who buries himself in the study of insects, termites and creepy crawlies) – in me, can be quite an incorrigible beast and therefore wriggled its way through to get to the bottom of it – the term ‘secretariat,’ that is, lest I am accused of being gross!
You must forgive me my tendency to ramble and digress and be a little long-winded – notwithstanding that it is not without good reason that I do so – but before I go again, let me get back to the theory, to which I relinquish any Einstein-isque claim to having postulated, and therefore choose to leave it in relative anonymity for the present time and space. So without further ado, let’s get back to the secretariat.
Nothing that ever happens within those hallowed portals is secret. In fact publicists, communication pundits and the tabloids swear by the efficacy of what is known as the “water cooler phenomenon.” It is their contention that it is like the water hole in the savannah where lion and zebra, cheetah and springbok, hyena and warthog will be oblivious of each others’ presence till they have drunk their fill. Since this little city rarely lets its denizens work up a proper thirst – for a cold cup of water, that is – the washrooms – that uses olfactory clues as directional signage – to guide anyone who might need to powder their nose are just as effective substitutes for the “water coolers.” And so, in a manner of speaking, it is to this fount of information free-flow that the ace newshound must sniff his way if he wishes to quench his thirst for knowledge – or if that is too disgusting a choice of metaphor – to grab a leak; which, in a way, sums up why scoops like Watergate make such horrific stinks.
So, as has been amply elucidated in the foregoing, since nothing that ever happens in the secretariat is secret, there is no plausible explanation why such a “non-characteristic” should be coined unless it was being used as a red-herring. Some suggest that the term could have originated from the word “sacred” (as in holy; as in holy cow) + “aerate” from the air of sanctity that hung heavy in the air. But that one was quickly discarded as having more sanctimoniousness rather than sanctity.
As I had said in the beginning, and maybe once or twice in the central body of the foregoing, I do tend to ramble, but I do also distinctly recall having said at least once, that was not without purpose. It is most curious but true that the most famous detectives the world has ever known, a Londoner addicted to opium with a retired military surgeon as a sidekick, who used deductive logic and reasoning to solve some of his most difficult cases was just the figment of the fertile imagination of a Knight of the British Empire. In one of his most suspenseful cases in which the eccentric sleuth was confronted with a string of coded messages of dancing stick figures. He was ultimately able to decipher what it meant because of the profusion of a particular character representing the most used vowel of the English language. The letter ‘e,’ the very same vowel that the venerable family Claus dropped from their name.
Using the same sense of deductive logic, it my thesis – as befuddling as the labyrinthine corridors of the bureaucracy itself – that in some convoluted way, there exists an “unholy nexus” as is said in “journalese” between the colour of many hues aka scarlet, crimson, rouge, carmine, ruddy and ruby; the chimney clamberer from the North Pole – who it is no coincidence wears a suit of the same colour and the most ubiquitous vowel in the English language. It is a triumvirate of a colour, a family name and a missing vowel that this entire dissertation is based.
Whoever coined the term was obviously well aware of the fact that the forebears of Santa – the reindeer-farmer; not, let me make myself doubly clear, not to be confused with the brave martial race from the land of the five rivers – had dropped the same vowel from a term spelt “S-E-C-R-E-T-E” that my trusty Microsoft Office thesaurus suggests I can, but only if I wish to, replace with an assortment of words that would convey subtly nuanced meanings without diluting its essence: exude, emit, ooze, produce, squirt. It is in perfect sync with the “water cooler phenomenon.” Journalese is practically riddled with clues; journo jargon such as as “breaking stories,” “getting the lowdown,” “here’s a flash,” “getting a scoop,” “making a big splash,” “exposé”, “digging up the dirt,” “the inverted pyramid”, “plugging” a story or “spiking one.” It’s probably the way Newton felt when the apple (there’s that fruit again, and the colour too) landed on his head, or the way Archimedes streaked directly out the bathtub. Like so many must have, before me, having spent most of my life erroneously believing I was just a mediocre, it still seems incredible that it took me to come along and crack the code. Like Euclid, I’m currently researching what all this fuss about promoting Hindi as the “Rashtra Bhasha” is. I know the Hindi term for Secretariat. It’s Sachivalaya. I’ve also noticed this new trend of fusing the Queen’s language and the Raja Bhashaa to create Hinglish.
So let’s break the word up into its components: Sachchi (meaning truth) + va (meaning and) could the “laya” possibly be another case of the missing vowel? Which would prove beyond reasonable doubt that Confidentiality Clause was created to perpetuate True Lies!