Figure of speech

t’s definitely the season of speeches and in Andhra Pradesh and Telugu Desam Party chief N. Chandrababu Naidu has been hogging all the headlines with his rhetoric — completely tongue-in-cheek and often, even snide.

Yellow definitely wasn’t mellow when he chose to hit below the belt, at Sonia Gandhi herself, when he matched Telangana Formation Day with the Republic Day of Italy — June 2.

Some went ‘ouch’, while others yelled out ‘not fair’. But Naidu has been unwavering in his assault.

But here’s the story. If you think Naidu’s speeches are written down on a little parchment overnight or they come in form of inky blots on his hand, you couldn’t be more mistaken. In fact, the Telugu Desam Party leader has one of the most elaborate “speech-writing  setups” that includes writers, an entire library and round-the-clock brainstorming. Telugu Desam Party’s repository has speeches from the world over.

According to sources, the party’s archives work 24x7, storing all of Naidu’s ‘dialogues’, collecting and comparing his speeches with world leaders’ and even focusing on the best possible line to explain an ideology. There are also whispers that son Nara Lokesh plays an integral part in deciding what dad has to say the next day and senior leaders claim “certain quotes” are born out of elaborate discussions among the party’s top heads.