Maybe she’s born with it, maybe it’s Maybelline’ is an advertising tagline I have always admired. Wordplay aside, it beautifully captures the promise that Maybelline’s beautifying effect is so seamless that beholders are left wondering if your beauty is all-natural and genetically bestowed, or skilfully enhanced by human artifice.
It’s a bit like cricket outcomes in the 1990s. Dazzled and delirious after an unexpected India victory, we could never be sure if we had actually won the match, or, if Pakistan or South Africa had thrown it. Basically: maybe it is a miracle, maybe it is match fixing.
In the 2020s, more than ever, we live in a tainted world where nothing is quite what it seems. AI-tweaked videos proliferate online. Successful actors, like Janhvi Kapoor and Rajkummar Rao, now admit, matter-of-factly and without shame, to having had a “little bit of work done”. Everywhere we look, things are subtly spiked, digitally enhanced, or genetically modified like the corn and soya bean the US is keen on selling in India.
Itna toh chalta hai [this is acceptable] seems to be the general verdict. We are all breezily ‘no judgment’ and ‘hey, if it floats your boat’.
And, then there are the films. Independent filmmakers, across India, have issued a statement condemning a “systemic pattern” in which small and mid-budget films are being pushed to the margins: limited screenings, weekday-only morning shows, sudden cancellations, lack of transparency around programming decisions and imbalanced prioritisation of big-budget releases.
Meanwhile, OTT platforms increasingly demand theatrical success as a prerequisite for acquisition. This is shrinking the nation’s cultural space—choking fresh, independent voices and giving the audience a choice of only a few bloated ‘leave your brain at home’ entertainers or toxic propaganda pieces. Basically, maybe it’s a good film, maybe it’s marketing.
Or, consider elections. We see the BJP triumph repeatedly and wonder—maybe it is the people’s mandate, maybe it is meddling. See the beauty of the Maybelline line: it captures the grey area in which we now live. Nobody really knows. It could be one thing, the other, or a combination of both.
Rao, for instance, is a skilled actor—full of gravitas, charm, comic timing, puppy-dog eyes and now a cosmetically enhanced chin. So you can’t go around saying he is untalented and witless and ‘only a hit because chin’—that makes him look proactive and smart, and you look like a loser.
Similarly, the BJP is winning not just because it’s probably diddling the books but also because it is extremely strong organisationally. It has (until recently) tended to reward ability and hard work, it has made a large section of Hindus feel proud of their civilisational heritage and pantheon of gods.
What does the Congress have to counter that? It can’t be ‘the party that got you your independence’ cos what-have-you-done-for-me-lately? It can’t be jobs alone because that’s low on Maslow’s pyramid of needs. It can’t be ‘democracy is in danger’ because that just sounds like the Congress is in danger.
The Congress, urgently, needs to deliver a higher-order dream. An imagination-firing dream that will make corporates open up their coffers and give voters goosebumps when they press the hand symbol. It could be a new definition of independence, perhaps. Or, an inclusive new definition of Indianness, drawing from our roots as pluralists, philosophers, scientists and farmers—gently contemptuous of the shrill, childish binaries that hindutva advocates.
But it needs to be higher order than just ‘food’ and ‘jobs’ or ‘miss-miss, the BJP won by cheating’.
Figure out your ‘born with it’ quotient, basically, instead of complaining about the other party’s Maybelline.