Given Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s penchant — some would say near-obsession — for taking selfies, be it with towering leaders on the global stage like the president of Mongolia or with non-resident auntyjis in Seoul, one wonders what kind of selfies his predecessors might have taken had the cellphone been invented a lot earlier.

Our first PM, Jawaharlal Nehru would no doubt have shot a selfie or three with Edwina Mountbatten, both of them surreptitiously stealing a smoke behind Teen Murti Bhawan. One can also picture him taking a selfie with Mohd Ali Jinnah, both of them biting into opposite ends of a pulled pork burger on Marine Drive; perhaps such a selfie could have helped prevent Partition.

Somehow one imagines Atal Bihari Vajpayee would prefer instagramming his favourite food — samosas and jalebis (you can’t finish yours? I’ll take that too) — than having to take a selfie with his dour deputy Lal Krishna Advani, especially with Sushma Swaraj occasionally photo-bombing them Agra-summit style. Perhaps Pakistani PM Nawaz Sharif would have persuaded Vajpayee to take a ‘seat-belt’ selfie while still on the Lahore bus.

Some prime ministerial selfies would have been predictable: HD Deve Gowda forever posting the just-woke-up selfie or even the pretending-to-be-asleep selfie, which is the most phoney selfie in the world, given that you have to be awake and conscious to be taking the damn selfie of yourself sleeping. All of Manmohan Singh’s selfies would, no doubt, be of his distinct silhouette, and would include Sonia Gandhi giving him the ‘stink eye’ — that round-eyed freeze-glare that Hollywood celebs are often caught giving one another.

Possibly the best selfies would have been those of Indira Gandhi, who no doubt would forever be RBF in all her selfies. (If you don’t know that RBF stands for Resting Bitch Face, please proceed to the next article.) One imagines her doing RBF with Henry Kissinger’s head trapped under her arm. Heck, if she were around today, she might have dyed the white streak in her hair something psychedelic for a kick-ass social media DP.

Though her son Rajiv seems as if he would have been a natural at selfies, somehow one can only imagine him taking selfies during his days as a pilot, with a stewardess in the cockpit. As for PV Narasimha Rao, one imagines him deliberately posting the ‘blurry selfie,’ with only his Jabba the Hutt pout in focus.

Yet it is only with Modi that the prime ministerial selfie has come into its own. Perhaps it is because he shares so many characteristics with that quintessential selfie-taking American egghead Kim Kardashian. Both are smart in expanding their appeal to the younger audiences, whether it be on television or in the voting booth. Both obviously think no end of themselves. If Kardashian is Queen of the Outrageous Dress, Modi is King with his name-embroidered, gold-pinstriped suit. Oh, and neither of them have read a book, ever; and they are likely proud of that.

Hopefully, Modi’s selfies have a The Picture of Dorian Gray quality to them. In Oscar Wilde’s novel, the narcissistic titular character keeps his youth and beauty intact while his portrait, painted by Basil Hallward, ages in a most terrifyingly ugly manner. One wonders what one might see in a cellphone that’s taken Modi’s selfie: not a shining, smiling PM, but a man who grimly allows his hordes to force cultural homogenisation upon the rest of us.

Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Modi’s selfie with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang, taken at Beijing’s Temple of Heaven, in which the two Asian frenemies jostled shoulders as if to grab advantage at the Line of Control, actually reveals the large-hearted and selfless Modi, unlike the other selfie-obsessed ones around the world. Or maybe the real Modi selfie that will be taken one day will be with his Pakistani counterpart, Nawaz Sharif: at a discotheque loo, making the duck-face in the bathroom mirror, their bandhgalas recklessly open a few buttons down from the collar. Even I’d light a candle at Wagah border for that.

Or perhaps Modi needs to first take a few selfies at home, across the political aisle. One could be him and Naveen Patnaik riding Olive Ridley sea turtles into the Bay of Bengal; another could be him and Arvind Kejriwal pretending to play Quidditch on their brooms; or perhaps him and Mulayam Singh Yadav on the floor at an Indian Kabaddi League match; or him and Nitish Kumar enjoying a plate of delicious litti chokha ; or him and Mamata, sitting on deckchairs in the middle of the Sunderbans, sipping apple martinis; or an at-the-gym selfie with Rahul Gandhi and his iron-pumped brother-in-law.

Modi could do that to try and make governance a lot easier. Or he could just go abroad, maybe to Lithuania or to Zimbabwe, for what better way to express vasudhaiva kutumbakam than through your cellphone camera.

Aditya Sinha has written Kashmir: The Vajpayee Years with AS Dulat

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