THE HINDU DT 2 February 2023
QUOTE “….. he has gone from a boy to a man by sporting a beard. “The moustache and the beard have always been revered as an arrival of manhood in our country…” UNQUOTE
😳🙄🙄🙄
If “The Hindu” report above is to be believed it has taken half a century— 52 years to be exact! (DOB: 19 June 1970) — for this scion of the Nehru-Gandhi family to outgrow boyhood and adolescence and blossom into full manhood! And what’s the proof? An unkempt outgrowth of a 150-day old beard!!
This 52 year old adolescent surely has to be lauded for his unrelentingly heroic efforts in life to reach manhood … What a crowning achievement indeed!
If growing a long beard can win elections for Rahul Gandhi in the upcoming 2024 elections in India, he certainly deserves then pride of place in the fairyland of Rapunzel, the 19th century children’s morality-story the Grimms brothers wrote to portray the agony and ecstasy of a young girl — who grows luscious overly long hair and undergoes a painful rite of passage from puberty to maturity to redemption. The profound questions underlying the Grimms’ fairy tale are this “how can one learn? What must one do to use one’s powers rightly in order to be accepted in society or recreate society in keeping with the norms of the status quo?”
The familiar line in the story “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair!” — which is entirely the invention of the brothers Grimm— echoes indeed the personality-assessment that Barack Obama once upon a time not very long ago candidly made of Rahul Gandhi: QUOTE: “…. He has a nervous, unformed quality about him like a student eager to impress the teacher but lacking aptitude and passion to master the subject.”
Will Rahul Gandhi’s long beard carefully grown during his recent journeying in life from political puberty to political maturity — which the Hindu report says is symbolised by the Kanyakumari-to-Kashmir Yaatra that he has just completed — turn out to be the Rapunzel Redemption for him?
Watch this space for an answer in May 2024….
Sudarshan Madabushi