Ain’t she amazing?
Even before you can say “Mama Mia, Mother Theresa!” the First Lady emerges from Air Force One fresh as a butterfly and dazzles the Texan people deluged by Hurricane Harvey.
Do we mention that even the town upon which the presidential couple descended is named Corpus Christie — the body of Christ the Saviour?
She is dressed nun-like in a crisp white shirt buttoned from breast to waist, with slim black pants. It’s the headgear that attracts attention. It proclaims her status as FLOTUS — or in case you’ve missed the point that she is now the wife of the world’s second most powerfully inclined individual — First Lady of the United States. We pause a moment to wonder what Hilary Clinton’s husband would have worn under similar circumstances? A peaked cap with the words ‘HOTUS’ — husband of the United States?
She wears no jewellery. She sports designer dark glasses. You can’t see her slightly upward slanting eyes, set in those superb Slovenian cheekbones. Her hair is pulled back in a simple ponytail. She has traded her trademark six-inch high Manolo Blahnik heels for sensible white sneakers. What? No socks, we ask? Are the sneakers made in America?
Despite the relentless media attempts to deconstruct Melania there is something reassuringly down to earth about her.
It could be her lineage. On the one hand, we are told that her grandfather, Anton Ulcuk, was an intrepid onion farmer who brought fame and fortune to the town of Raka. He cross-bred a red Egyptian variety of red onion with a local Slovenian one and created a hybrid known as the Raka Red. It resembles our very own sāmbhar onions.
White House gardeners are trying to grow the Red Raka in their gardens, no doubt to be labelled – The Red Onion of the United States: ROTUS.
Indians invited to dine with the presidential couple at the White House will inevitably hold forth on how similar the ROTUS is to the small red onions grown by their grandfathers in the Thanjavur delta. The Indian wives will slip a few ROTUS into their silken evening bags and take it back to grow in the backyards of Montana. Being hybrid, the pilfered onions will refuse to sprout.
Whether as Mother Theresa, flaunting her chiseled cheekbones, or Grampa’s onions, Melania rocks!