Twitterdom is celebrating with gusto Time magazine featuring Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi on the cover of the latest Asia issue. “Lion King on the cover of Time Magazine . What an honour.....for the magazine!” exulted Priti Gandhi.
Added Ravin Desai, “West finally awaken(s). Hindu Fighter gets highlighted; would be great to see US welcoming NaMo without Visa:”
But Meena Das Narayan turned up her nose and said: “A bit too late no? We knew it all the time.” While Gujarati pride went into an overdrive about Mr Modi being the third Gujarati — after Gandhiji and Sardar Patel — to achieve this feat, SuryahSG had this sarcastic comment, “Will Rome Mata forgive you for this?”.
Deepal Trevedie wondered: “He means business. Will Cong now dub
Others congratulated him for his “amazing work” and called him “India's most able and capable leader”.
Penned by Jyoti Thottam, Time 's South-Asia Bureau Chief, the article ( Boy from the backyard ) describes Modi as a “controversial, ambitious and shrewd politician”.
She calls his recent fasts “Modi's makeover mode: an act of self-purification, humility and bridge building in a State that is still traumatised by the Hindu-led anti-Muslim massacres of 10 years ago and the flawed investigations in their wake.”
But as both Facebook and Twitter erupted into celebration, hard to spot were comments on Mr Modi's bête noir , Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, too making it to the magazine's cover after the 2004 Lok Sabha polls.
In an article titled ‘Why Narendra Modi is India's most loved and loathed politician' on Time 's Globalspin blog ( http://globalspin.blogs.time.com ), Ms Thottam called him “the most polarising politician in India … a possible future prime minister.”
Significantly, she added: “But it bears repeating that putting Modi on the cover is not an endorsement. Researching and eventually interviewing Modi was, however, fascinating, and yielded several surprises.”
My vote goes to this tweet by ritz_shetty: “That dude's got some serious power!”