The healing touch

Better late than never. The picture from Ahmedabad of those bright, shining faces looking in awe at their favourite cricketers tells a story...

Better late than never. The picture from Ahmedabad of those bright, shining faces looking in awe at their favourite cricketers tells a story that goes far beyond cricket. After eight months of living in fear and anguish, six children affected by the Ahmedabad riots finally got some star visitors. What made the interaction more meaningful was the involvement of Virender Sehwag and Mohammed Kaif, two young stars but, more importantly, smalltown boys who can appreciate what it’s like to be on the fringes. It’s a telling comment on our own psyche, on the way we deal with those we can’t relate to — and, for all the column space we’ve given them, we really can’t identify with what these people have gone through.

Send them a couple of politicians, a president, a prime minister, a social worker or two and all the camera crews ready to take a bite of the misery pie. But where have the celebs been? The message a prime minister carries is not so much for the victims as for every other constituent: errant local satrap, coalition allies, community leaders, the world at large. For those visited, the attendant security and bureaucracy does little more than add to the misery. And they can never forget the bottom line: they are all politicians and they come with political baggage.

Consider, instead, the impact of a visit from, say, Madhuri Dixit or Shah Rukh Khan. Or, given their Gujarati connections, Juhi Chawla and Jackie Shroff, or even Aamir Khan repaying his lagaan to the state. The effect of such a statement can’t be overestimated: these are people who have no vested interests, no opinion polls to worry about, no political message to send out, and who can touch lives in ways the establishment never can. For that time, the victims are lifted out of the grim reality that surrounds them. Sport, especially, has the awesome power of making people feel better. That’s why sportsmen so regularly visit children’s cancer wards, that’s why terminally ill boys and girls ask for, as their one wish, a visit by their favourite cricketer or footballer. Football matches in Britain often start with the teams being led out by a child suffering from some incurable disease but experiencing, for that brief period, extreme happiness. That’s the kind of happiness on display in Ahmedabad on Thursday. It’s easy to recreate; if, of course, it ever crosses our mind.