Of Giant Grins and Moustaches

Asif Ali Zardari’s grin has accompanied every big headline in the recent past. Despite the sorry state of affairs that have bestowed our country, that ear-to-ear beam coupled with the trademark V-sign has been splashed across televisions, newspapers and websites.
We here at dawn.com have a lot of tasks at hand and one of the most crucial one is of course to find a suitable image with every story we publish. However, President Zardari has made this relatively easy aspect of our job quite hard. As being the leader of this land of the pure, we need sober, serious and sometimes grim pictures of him. Finding one of those, however, has become close to impossible.
Whether he is meeting with leaders in neighbouring countries, standing outside 10 Downing Street, pacifying the country after the Marriott bombing or sharing a hug with Singh, that giant grin has always persistently glowed on his face. And so we resort to finding file pictures of him – but then we have to face the moustache issue. Now that there is no moustache, older pictures are unacceptable. Now we have the slicked back, spectacled look which needless to say is accompanied each time by that toothy smile.
What choice do we have then but to recycle the same pictures over and over again? We have a serious one or two from the UN General Assembly, which often come in handy. Then we also have a few random ones from a Parliament address and so we savour those pictures and keep them in a very sacred folder.
But in the past few days, we had come across a change and our red-flags had started waving. In these troubled times where one would turn to any hope they can cling on, we saw our President’s grin dwindle. Could it have been an indication of worse times to come, or was it a sign of sober sincerity taking over our leader?
Either way, we here at dawn.com appreciated the change and for starters, we now had a picture to match every story. The diverse expressions caused us to breathe a sigh of relief – but then came the Punjab governor rule development. Now that the PPP has decided to instal its government in Punjab, does it mean that the grin will come back? What is your take on this smile that has lingered on for far too long?