Sarci-Sense: The Problem With Joined Hands

One of the most optimistic sights in public life is the joined-hands photograph.

Leaders stand shoulder to shoulder, fingers interlocked and smiles calibrated for history. The image is intended to signal unity, solidarity and common purpose. What it often signals is the presence of a photographer and a common adversary.

Few things in life age as rapidly as photographs celebrating togetherness.

Electoral alliances do it. Corporate founders do it. Family businesses do it. Film stars do it. Human beings, it would appear, possess an almost touching faith that relationships can be preserved through symbolism. History, unfortunately, has always preferred footnotes to photographs.

Politics merely makes the phenomenon visible. Every election season produces images of leaders raising joined hands with the confidence of newlyweds and the optimism of people who have not yet discussed seat-sharing arrangements. The photographs are magnificent because photographs usually are. What they rarely reveal are ambition, insecurity and the distinct possibility that the same individuals may spend the next election describing one another as existential threats to civilisation.

Friends become enemies with surprising speed. Enemies discover common principles with even greater speed. Politicians who once denounced each other with theatrical intensity suddenly discover the virtues of cooperation. Those who swore eternal brotherhood discover irreconcilable differences. Principles, it turns out, possess remarkable flexibility when arithmetic enters the room.

Corporate India is not entirely innocent. Joint ventures begin with bouquets, handshakes and the discovery of “synergy”, that mysterious substance which appears frequently in press releases and disappears mysteriously during arbitration. Founders speak of shared vision with the seriousness of scripture. Strategic alignment is celebrated. Long-term value is invoked. Photographs are taken.

Then reality arrives with meeting schedules, board discussions, cash flows, conflicting ambitions and the tedious business of living with other human beings. Relationships that looked effortless before the camera discover that permanence demands far more than chemistry. It demands compromise, restraint and occasionally selective amnesia.

Family businesses understand the theatre of unity better than most institutions. Weddings produce magnificent photographs. Cousins embrace, brothers smile and elders survey the scene with satisfaction. Entire clans gather with astonishing affection and remarkable confidence in the future. Inheritance discussions, however, possess a remarkable ability to introduce realism into family portraiture.

Perhaps no institution understands the optimism of togetherness better than marriage itself. Wedding albums are extraordinary documents. Nobody arrives at the mandap contemplating mediation. Nobody stands beside a seven-tier cake imagining disputes. Hope is genuine because hope remains one of humanity’s most renewable resources.

Which is perhaps why it is unfair to laugh at joined hands. They are acts of hope. Human beings perform ceremonies because they are uncomfortable with uncertainty. A photograph offers what life rarely does. It offers the illusion that a moment can be preserved and feelings can be frozen.

The problem lies with the audience. We look at these images and imagine permanence. We assume that a captured moment is a promise. Cameras encourage us to believe that loyalties are fixed and interests immutable. Human beings, however, are not monuments. They are weather systems.

People change.

Circumstances change.

Incentives change.

Ambitions change.

Principles occasionally change with an enthusiasm that deserves scientific study.

Social media, naturally, has transformed symbolism into an industry. Never before have ordinary people possessed such sophisticated tools for manufacturing permanence. Every reunion, anniversary and collaboration now arrives with visual evidence. The camera records affection. It has no method for recording boredom, resentment or the thousand negotiations that determine whether togetherness survives.

One guesses that even entire coalitions, companies and friendships might have been built upon a shared dislike of somebody else. Unfortunately, resentment is excellent at creating alliances and terrible at sustaining them. Common interests have built more partnerships than affection ever has. There is nothing particularly scandalous about this. Civilisation itself rests upon temporary agreements between imperfect people.

The irony is that enemies often understand each other better than friends. Rivals become allies. Allies become rivals. People separated by ideology discover common interests. People united by values discover conflicting ambitions. Human beings possess a remarkable ability to redraw their emotional geography.

Perhaps that is why old photographs exert such emotional power over us. They do not lie. They merely tell incomplete truths. The smiles were genuine. The affection existed. The hopes were real. What changed was not the honesty of the moment, but the assumption that human beings would remain exactly as they were when the flash went off.

There is, therefore, nothing embarrassing about photographs of smiling leaders, affectionate founders or united families. They are evidence neither of hypocrisy nor betrayal. They are reminders that life refuses to honour the promises that cameras silently make.

Human beings have always been temporary arrangements pretending to be permanent institutions.

The camera merely records the optimism.