When Zinedine Zidane visited India

On a hot Friday afternoon, a barren cement driveway of the NSCI in Worli and the cracked buildings around looked not very different from La Castellane, the Marseille neighbourhood where angels fear to tread. And where Zinedine Zidane grew up.

Security men and event organisers waited anxiously in the porch. Beyond the periphery of the club was the Gulab Shah Baba dargah. And a few minutes before Zidane, a French-Algerian Muslim, arrived, a microphone nearby released the chant ‘Allahu Akbar’ into the air. In a film this moment would seem choreographed. But this was reality.

Zidane was everywhere the last few days in Mumbai and the media. And yet he wasn’t. He came, warmed briefly, wore Indian clothes and smiled. And then vanished. That is the quality of the man. He is a legend. He is an enigma. When he smiles his eyes crinkle but otherwise he gives little. "Nobody knows if Zidane is an angel or demon," the French musician Jean-Louis Murat once said. "He smiles like Saint Teresa and grimaces like a serial killer."

One way to get some sense of Zidane was to look and listen. But you couldn’t be around too close. "Are you press? Then please don’t wait here," an organiser with a hands-free communication kit pleaded at the NSCI driveway. Zidane had not enjoyed being mobbed at Mumbai airport the day he landed. At around 3 am that night he sent word that he would cancel some of the interviews. The harried organiser with the hands free set said that Zidane may simply walk out if he was mobbed again. He is known to be the Aata maajhi satakli type. (Closest French translation: maintenant, je suis en colère).

Photography is not entirely truth, a theory gaining ground after the famous photographer Steve McCurry admitted using Photoshop to alter some pictures. But hurriedly taken images, especially of people landing in a foreign place, have a bit of honesty to them. The subject nor the photographer have as much time to alter reality. Zidane’s first pictures made it clear that he is not the kind to blow kisses to the hordes. When Pele came to India he was touched by the reception and said ‘obrigado’. Maradona stood up at Salt Lake Stadium in Kolkata and thumped his fist against his chest. He was overcome. But Zidane just wanted to get out of the bedlam at the airport.

After a night’s rest he softened a bit. In his promotional appearances and interactions with the media he sat with hands joining in his lap, his bearing erect and breath steady. Occasionally he ran his tongue over his lips out of some nervousness, and the audience saw he was human. He is almost as fit as he was in his playing days. He did not shirk from answering questions. And when a journalist asked him about the Materazzi headbutt, he answered patiently, his left palm open towards the journalist as the interpreter translated every line. There was also what seemed like a mild reproach of an interpreter who was in and out of the room. Zidane wanted him to stay put. "I don’t know if I’m a good person, but I know I’m not a bad one," Zidane once said in an interview. His family would know more about him. But not many others.