Alas Yogi Adityanath, you have failed us.

When the media was filled with gasps of horrors at a fiery sadhu being handed the reins of Uttar Pradesh, I was secretly excited to learn he was only 5'5".

The most popular adjective used for the new chief minister of Uttar Pradesh was "diminutive".

The New York Times called him "diminutive, baby-faced". PTI called him "diminutive, shaven-headed" as did Indian Express.The Telegraph described him as a "diminutive figure in saffron".

As a height-challenged man myself, I secretly root for my equals, the Jyoti Basus and Pranab Mukherjees, the little men who scuttle their way to the top. I revel in their elevation to power and fortune. I mourn when they get elbowed out at the end. I enjoy the thought that their fans and devotees must look down on them in order to look up to them.

This height challenge is not a figment of my insecurity. Anyone following the Donald Trump reality show knows that size matters. It turns out Trump thought Senator Bob Corker at 5'7" was too short to be his Secretary of State. Now that Corker has uncorked on him to the New York Times, Trump has taken to taunting him as "Liddle Bob Corker". It's always a steeper climb to the top for smaller men, at a disadvantage everywhere except in economy class of airlines.

The current government seems especially keen on statues, the bigger the better.

So it comes as crushing news that the diminutive Adityanath also wants to walk in the footsteps of giants. He will gift us a Lord Ram statue which will be 100 metres tall. Et tu Adityanath? Then fall the League of Diminutive Men. The Age of Pranab-da and Jyoti-babu is truly at an end.

I thought the fiery Adityanath was a David who wanted to slay myriad Goliath. But he turns out to want to be a Goliath himself.

Humanity has a thing for big statues all the way back to the Colossus of Rhodes. But it's a curious thing that these days in India we are hellbent on statue building whereas in much of the world we seem to live in an age of statue toppling. The biggest news in the last decade or so when it comes to statues have been about the ones coming down -– the Confederate heroes of the American South, the Bamiyan Buddhas of Afghanistan, Saddam Hussein in Baghdad, Cecil John Rhodes in Capetown, Cecil John Rhodes in Capetown, Mahatma Gandhi in Ghana. One must be careful about statues. Statues are erected to honour one singular figure. They tend to be brought down in a cathartic rage by nameless masses buzzing with anger.