The no-confidence motion in Parliament that Prime Minister Narendra Modi won on Friday is now famous for just one thing: Congress President Rahul Gandhi's hug. It is the most talked about thing, more than Modi's own interminable and stale speech; more than Speaker Sumitra Mahajan's schoolmarmishness, in which she outdid her predecessor Meira Kumar; more than Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman's weak defence of the Rafale purchase, which now increasingly resembles the days of Bofors in the 1980s, when Congress ministers popped up from their seats not to defend the government but to defend their PM.

The photo of the hug featured on the front pages, and it bothered Modi so much that he went out to Shahjahanpur, UP, for a Kisan rally and accused Rahul of an ambush: "gale pad gaye". His Twitter team was hyperactive with its usual mix of bluster and untruths, desperate to snatch back control of the narrative. Modi cheerleaders half-heartedly decried Rahul's "theatrics"; one even ill-advisedly went on TV and said the Great Leader's speech had "lynched" the Opposition. An unfortunate choice of words. It is a telling contrast: be hugged, or be lynched. World leaders must worry what lies in store for them the next time they meet Modi. (Well, not Chinese President Xi Jinping, who spent a weekend in Wuhan with Modi, but did not give a single hug.)