Let's face it

Jug Suraiya
05 December 2013, 10:13 PM IST

The other day i chanced to overhear a group of people vociferously discussing plus and minus points of the two PM hopefuls. It seemed from the talk that both candidates were more or less running neck and neck until the question of being decisive came up: of the two, Rahul and NaMo, who had shown himself to be better at taking decisions?

One of the top qualities needed in the next PM was decisiveness: everyone wants a guy who can take decisions, and act on them, not someone who's likely to sit on the prime ministerial chair doing heads-or-tails with a coin deciding which way to go while the country goes to hell in a handbasket for lack of any other decided destination. Yup, it was generally agreed that what the country needed was a decision-maker.

And in the decision-making league, Modi scores over Rahul literally by a whisker. It isn't that NaMo has shown himself to be more decided in his views about things like FDI in retail, or Article 370 and the status of Kashmir, or whether Shyama Prasad Mukherjee was really Shyam Krishan Verma (or should that be vice-versa?), or if Alexander the Great had included Bihar in his itinerary when he took a package tour of India way back in 627 AD.

No, in all these trivial details, Narendrabhai has shown himself to be of what might be called ambivalent mind. On any of these, and related issues, one day he might be on one side of the fence, and the next day on the other side, or maybe sitting on top of the fence, like a Humpty-Dumpty waiting to happen. But on the one major matter in regard to which NaMo – in sharp contrast to Rahul – has shown himself to be decidedly decided is on the question of facial hair: whether or not one should sport a beard.

NaMo has a beard. There is photographic proof of it, as there is photographic proof of what looks like canals on the surface of Mars. Not only does NaMo have a beard, but he makes it look as though he's always had it, even when he'd been in Huggies with a rubber pacifier stuck in his mouth. This beardedness shows a decidedly decided bent of mind.

Rahul, on the other hand (the other cheek?), can't seem to make up his mind on the subject of beards. One day he'll appear in public exhibiting what is sometimes called a 'designer stubble' – a sort of fungoid growth that cheese left too long in the fridge begins to sprout after a while – and the next day he'll show up with a face as slick and smooth as a baby's bottom. So, what is Rahul's official policy, his ideological stand on whiskers? Does he or does he not want to keep a beard? No one knows. Not even his supporters.

Every time he rolls up his sleeves, no one knows what he's decided to do. Shave off his bristly growth, like the quills of a midget porcupine? Or let it all hang out and develop into an honest-to-goodness dadhi?

To beard, or not to beard. That seems to be Rahul's Hamlet-moment. Which allows NaMo to romp home in the decision-making stakes. Poor Rahul. He doesn't seem to have realised the great advantage that cultivating a beard gives to male politicians: no one can call them bare-faced liars.

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