Deprived of cricket, migrant ‘super fan’ makes it to hometown but is stigmatised
Sudhir Kumar Gautam is Indian’s most recognisable cricket fan. For decades now, the thin man with a shaved head and tricolour body paint has been a permanent fixture at India matches. TV cameras faithfully zoom in on him when something celebratory happens, and he blows his conch and waves a large national flag with the other hand. Other spectators mob him for selfies. Gautam is used to attention, and a life lived on the road.
Now he is under quarantine at home, and the subject of attention he does not care for. At his village, Damodarpur in Bihar’s Muzaffarpur district, he is seen with mistrust. That’s because Gautam, who was at a friend’s house in Delhi when the lockdown was announced in March, set off for home on May 7. After spending 55 days at the friend’s place, Gautam borrowed an old motorbike that had already clocked 52,000km, and covered roughly 1000km in two days.
On the night of May 7, he reached Lucknow, where he planned to sleep at a friend’s house. That did not work out. “Residents at my friend’s society made a scene, that since I had come from Delhi, I could be carrying the virus,” he said. Gautam rode on. He reached Damodarpur on the night of May 8, but the usual warmth from fellow villagers, whom he regularly gifts team India memorabilia, was missing. “Everyone was scared,” Gautam says.
People complained to the sarpanch, who ordered Gautam to get himself tested for Covid-19, and go into a 21-day quarantine. Gautam was tested for symptoms at the local healthcare centre and since he did not show any, no further tests were done.