Democracy and beards

Much has been written about the past 3 years of upheavals in the Middle East and the rest of the world. Arab Spring, Jasmine revolution, Taksim Square, India Gate, Russian roulette..... you get the picture. But as I was sitting and caressing my growing beard and trying to make sense of what is happening in Syria and Egypt and so on, I couldn’t help but think about a hidden connection. A connection between something which is ubiquitous in the Islamic world (and post Clooney and Affleck in the West as well, it seems!) and something which is not –Democracy. More accurately beards & democracy.

Come to think of this. Does not a totalitarian regime (be it one “resolutely” elected by people or one where a guy in uniform just plops himself on the throne) look like a clean shaven face. No blemishes, no patches, just a clean smooth face at first look.What with the pocketed secularism, the fenced modernization and bracketed incomes. Not so long ago they looked like models of efficiency (except their share of “trouble mongers”!). We saw western corporations doing free business, their leaders hobnobbing with the power elite of the world, their rich richer than our rich and their poor less visible than ours. A classic clean shaven face. No beard no fuss, no democracy no problem.

But as nature (Mother and human) would have it those darned hair start growing. First in place where you should have noticed, but don’t, like under your nose, and then slowly like a fungus growing in patches over different areas. The hills of the chin, the plains of the cheeks and the elevations of the jaws it’s everywhere and boy is it ugly! Foreign aid and business stops; you stop getting invited to parties; you try to trim it but just flares up. And then the regime (or any gentleman) is faced with questions - should we trim it or should we go the whole hog and clean it off? Is a moustache an answer? Maybe a slim one just below the nose to show that we have “it” (yet it means nothing) or a goatee which highlights the mouth but is untouched by the rest of the face or (horror of horror!) a full beard

I need to clarify here a bit. I equate democracy with a full unshaven beard because there is very little or no censorship trimming it. It grows the way it wants; liberally or conservatively; right side or left side; sometimes active sometimes quiescent; some hair longer than others some younger; some covering an ugly scar or some accentuating a high nose. By this bench mark India, USA France and the like will be like wise old sages with Tennyson-esqe white flowing beards.

On the other hand a dictatorship is like a clean shaven face. Rules are strictly followed, discipline is visible. Smooth. But smooth though it may seem the face endures thousands of razor nicks in the process and that too by the hands which were supposed to protect the face.

The beard can also grow rambunctious (media trials, moral police, cultural police...) and may require a little shaping and trimming, but that’s an issue for another day.

The fact is a beard, though unseemly it may seem in the beginning and posing an existential question to the wearer (Why are you doing this?), when it grows it defines a face. It softens the harshness of the eye, gives volume to the mouth, smoothens the rough edges and, sometimes, also hides ugly pock marks.

But it’s this wretched growing phase which annoys and irks every one. But I remain hopeful that democracy will come, even if in patches and fits and starts, to those who seek it. It is our natural instinct - freedom and equality. Just ask anyone untouched by ‘civilization’.