CHENNAI: In June 2008, when President Barack Obama was still a presidential hopeful, TIME Magazine published a photograph in which, palm over palm, the candidate held a mélange of metal trinkets. The magazine called them his “lucky charms”, and they included an open bangle that had belonged to a US soldier in Iraq, an icon of the Madonna and child, and a tiny statuette of Hanuman.
As his two-term tenure as President of the United States comes to end, Obama emptied out his pockets again for a special interview on YouTube. As was widely reported in the Indian press, the monkey-god figurine is one he still carries everywhere. I remembered this from 2008; that had been the year that Hanuman had become a vivid presence in my own life, and indeed was the emissary through whom I befriended my muse of many years, Sita. But the tone of the recent coverage bothered me.
These are the talismans that Obama chose to display during that video interview: a gift of rosary beads from Pope Francis, with a pendant of Christ on the cross; a shiny poker chip that a burly biker gave him while he was on the campaign trail prior to his first election; an Ethiopian Coptic cross, origin mysterious; a Buddha statuette, a monk’s present; and, of course, the Hanuman, given to him by ‘a woman’.
Taken together, these amulets are a handful of syncretism. Gifts given to a leader as totems perhaps of blessing and protection but more importantly, of responsibility. He carries them on his person, the way auto-drivers paste Ganesha-Jesus-mosque stickers on their front windows or on their handlebar cabins.
One trinket on its own would only be a personal fetish, but a collection amounts to much more, symbolically and otherwise. And in the current national climate, there’s something just a little saddening about the media focus on that Hanuman statuette. The Buddha too, lest we forget, is just as Indian in origin. Those rosary beads are a part of the worship of millions of citizens. And what, since we’re jousting, could be more secular than a poker chip, representative of the gamble each of us takes on life every single day?
Obama may or may not attach spiritual significance to the talismans he carries. But, what he certainly shares openly is that each of these objects was given to him by a specific person and reaching for them reminds him of his commitment. How successful he has been at this commitment in his time in power is a matter of argument. But the least there is to learn here is that one must believe one can do more than try. When we seek to touch the divine, let us not overlook that among its marvellous, and certainly, imitable qualities is the one known (not without basis) as ‘humanity’.
(The Chennai-based author writes poetry, fiction and more)
@ranyamanivannan