And even as Celeste debunked contemporary North Block wisdom and marvelled at the state government's functioning and reportedly followed up his words of awe with an offer of financial investment, he was probably aware of some startling similarities between two of the most bewildering democracies: the Republic of Bihar and the United States of America.

``She has stood by him in the eyes of the world with Homeric dignity,'' gushed Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez in his latest journalistic offering. A bestowing of model couple status as applicable to Hillary Clinton and Bill, as the Latin American writer no doubt intended, as to Rabri and Laloo. Just as Hillaryhad feminists tied up in knots over her stoic silence over her husband's escapades in the Oval Office and expositions on the word `is', Rabri maintained an unruffled, sindhoored calm when Laloo gave an unexpected twist to the sisterhood's demand for increased representation in legislatures.

Indeed, the Clintons may have sought to reinvent the terms of tenancy at the White House in the 1992 election campaign by deeming themselves the first First Couple, equal partners in presidentship as it were; but it was the Yadavs at Patna's Anne Marg who led the way by giving a practical spin to chief-ministership as a matrimonial partnership. Likewise while Hillary reached out to the silent majority by transforming into a Vogue covergirl, Rabri went one full step ahead and gave a new meaning to woman power by wielding her ladle a trifle more threateningly than her husband's walking stick.

Purists may be outraged but in our hopelessly post-modern democracies it is numbers, not subtle rule-of-the-law nitty-gritties,that count -- a point Rabri made to Celeste in her understated, housewifely manner. Clinton may suffer the humiliation of inadvertently imparting a lesson or two in sex education and the virtues of not inhaling to a whole generation of American kids, but as long as he keeps churning out red-faced apologies and dropping in at the neighbourhood McDonald's, his popularity ratings will continue their stratospheric soarings.

Rabri's consort may be accused of imparting a charity-begins-at-home interpretation to social justice, but as long as he keeps recommending colour televisions for roofless schools, so that children can keep track of his homespun mutterings, he'll keep abreast in the numbers game. Only problem is, numbers have an infuriating tendency to disappear into thin air. Rabri may bask in the security of her blooming brood of nine, but one fine day the electorate may forsake entertainment for good governance. Just as the world's only superpower may suddenly tire of fat Monica's musings and seek areturn to dignity.