india

Updated: Jun 19, 2020 02:05 IST

Congress leader Shashi Tharoor was among a host of party leaders who came out in support of former minister P Chidambaram, arrested Wednesday night in INX media case, throwing in a tongue twister.

Referring to a quote by Chidambaram last year: “To a person running scared, every shadow will be a demon”, Tharoor tweeted hours before the former minister’s arrest saying, “ It is a tribute to your strength of character that you are standing up to persecution &character assassination w/ courage & confidence. I believe justice will prevail in the end. Till then we will have to allow some malicious minds their schadenfreude.”

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Tharoor, who is known to pepper his comments with obscure words, sent tweeple reaching out for their dictionaries for the meaning of ‘schadenfreude’. The Oxford dictionary meaning of the word schadenfreude is, ‘a feeling of pleasure at the bad things that happen to other people.’

The Thiruvananthapuram lawmaker, who has a way with words, has in the past used words like farrago, rodomontade, webaqoof, kakistocracy and snollygoster.

Last year his comment, “I’ve had to put up with a lot of roorbacks in the last few years!” sent people scurrying for dictionaries. Roorbacks means ‘a defamatory falsehood published for political effort’.

Former union minister and senior Congress leader P Chidambaram, who was denied bail by high court tried to get respite from the Supreme Court on Wednesday but failed to do so as the top court posted that matter for Friday. This was followed by high drama that started at the Congress office with Chidambaram’s press conference at 8.15 pm and ended at his Jor Bagh residence from where he was taken away by a CBI team after climbing a walls and amid scuffles.

Chidambaram was taken out of his house at 9.45 pm and bundled into a car. He sat in the middle on the rear seat between two CBI officials and was driven away.