APJ Abdul Kalam: The President with 'wild hair'

When APJ Abdul Kalam rocketed into Rashtrapati Bhavan propelled by 9,22,844 votes in 2002 as India's 11th President, one invalidated ballot paper famously bore the observation- "Abdul Kalam will look better with a haircut." Not many people would have agreed - for India's only apolitical president may have been virtually unrecognisable without his nape-length grey bob, complete with two Grecian curls framing his forehead.

It took a supremely confident personality to sport something so much at variance with the norm, and those glistening immaculately coiffed locks very aptly announced the unconventional mind that dwelt beneath. No other president before and certainly not since made his (or her) style a manifestation of his personal philosophy. It was as if, like Samson, his hair was both a source of strength and inspiration, right from his days as a missile scientist when colleagues had noted that he often pulled out a comb and tended his tresses if he espied a handy mirror.

"My hair grows and grows, you cannot stop it - that fellow grows, it grows wild," he once told a bemused interviewer. Of course he did have it trimmed "every quarter" - some say by his usual barbers, others averred it was a top hairstylist and paid great attention to its wellbeing. But this sole little vanity, when his stature offered him the opportunity for so many more affectations, only endeared him more to a country that had got unused to simplicity in high places.

Not for him was the fuddyduddy if grandiose presidential protocol that constricted his predecessors in clipped bandhgalas and formality. Indeed, his first four bandhgalas made by his own tailor and not any presidential couturier set the stage for the rest of his term and in effect reiterated the statement made by his hair by remaining defiantly and contradictorily open and unclipped around his neck. Even if his hair has not inspired any copycat cuts, his open bandhgala innovation has endured.

In fact, the term "Kalam Cut" could be as applicable to his sartorial style, and has certainly thrived beyond his stint atop Raisina Hill. But today, if others have had the gumption to let their hair down and take a more casual approach to stateliness, it can probably be ascribed to the effect of APJ Abdul Kalam.