Not to put too fine appoint on it, in this day of television ubiquity, a man’s face carries his destiny. This thought occurred to me while watching the heads of various sports bodies facing accusations of corruption.
There, on the right side of the screen, you had Mr Olympian Sports Body, his large visage almost occupying the entire screen, and, on the left, you had a sportsman — the victim of his misconduct. Mr Sports Body did all he could to convince his interlocutor and TV viewers of his sincerity, his commitment and his scrupulousness, the effort distorting the vast oil-field of his face, his jelly-like jowls jiggling under the strain. And then the camera zoomed in on the sportsman’s countenance: lean, fresh, transparent and earnest.
It was game, set, match in favour of the sportsman even before he’d opened his mouth.
“After 40, every man gets the face he deserves,” Abraham Lincoln once said. (On a lighter note, he’d also said, “If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?”) But what he meant by the previous remark was that our good deeds and bad, our fame and fortune, dreams and disappointments settle onto our faces as the years go by.
In Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray, this analogy is given poetic license when Gray’s own face remains unblemished and his portrait, hidden away in his attic, takes on all the evils of his character.
Many ancient civilisations like the Chinese held that a person’s character is reflected on his face, and this belief gave rise to all manners of face-reading.
Modern science too has investigated this belief. Recently, a study published by the Royal Society Of Biological Sciences found that people with a particular shape of face were inclined to insincerity. (Perhaps this gave rise to the term “two faced” in the first place.) But in an age where billions of dollars and unknown man-hours go into the beauty industry, perhaps more needs to be known about the science of appearance.
What does it mean for politicians seeking electoral victories or businessmen looking to raise loans?
If it is generally accepted that Richard Nixon partly lost the election to J F Kennedy because of the latter’s youthful “glow” and his own 6 o’clock stubble during the televised presidential debate, then face-reading ought to be taken a lot more seriously.
Recently, I had the opportunity to meet the Dalai Lama — not a handsome man in the traditional sense of the word but the aura of compassion and calm that he exuded spoke volumes and belied all the claims of the beauty industry. Looking at him I thought of Rumi’s words: “As you live deeper in the heart,/ The mirror gets clearer and cleaner.”
It occurred to me that afternoon that the halos drawn over the heads of holy men by their followers was an artistic rendition of the glow I saw on the Dalai Lama’s face.
But, of course, there is a danger in this simplistic way of judging a book by its cover.
Not many years ago, gangster Abu Salem’s serene and handsome face appeared regularly in the Mumbai papers. It was the face of a saint! There goes that theory I thought, until a cop informed me that he’d undergone extensive cosmetic surgery! Osama Bin Laden’s face too would challenge the theory.
But for the hapless and hopeless heavyweights on the sports bodies who try and plead their innocence to no avail — I guess that’s what is known as “losing face”.
Malavika Sangghvi is a Mumbai-based writer malavikasangghvi@hotmail.com
