The anxiety of a colleague of mine who got his palm burnt due to a fire cracker bursting in his hand, to seek a healing touch, has compelled me to dwell a little on cathartic and purgative healing agents. In my friend’s case, he hopes to shake hands with Aishwarya Rai or Obama or the Pope. The list may be unending.

Diana Hayden, before getting crowned as Miss World, was asked by Jackie Shroff - as one of the judges - Which historical figure she would like to marry. The beauty queen’s less brainy and more hearty response was in favour of Rajiv Gandhi. Once Rajiv Gandhi, while visiting Haryana, expressed his desire to be on the steering wheel of a Jonga; he was greeted on the wayside stopover by an old woman showering blessings of long life. Little did she realise then that she harboured another secret desire. Being an innocent and unpretentious woman, she minced no words in seeking to touch Rajiv Gandhi and know how he felt on being touched. She pleaded with honesty: “Oh Raju beta, should I touch your rosy cheeks?”

Beautiful women and men have always been agents of catharsis in any form, negative or positive, and for the subject the cathartical experience is always pleasurable. So, not only Diana Hayden was justified in fantasising marriage with the late Mr Clean but the Haryanvi woman too must have had an experience no less cathartic, whatever it means.

Interestingly, things of beauty have not only been a joy forever but they are effective agents of catharsis, too. When pent-up emotions find an abortive outlet, the experience is that of pleasure, believed Aristotle, who propounded the theory. The mass hysteria as witnessed with a number of self immolations and suicides after the death of MGR in Tamil Nadu a few years ago, was an example of negative catharsis. Yet it must have been a result of some negative stimulation experienced with “pleasurable deathwish” on the part of the MGR fans, who are no more with us to express their feelings.

The late Princess Diana is another case in point. Besides all other things, in death she proved to be an agent of mass English catharsis. Immediately after her car crash, the critics of British monarchy lost no time to vent their ire on British royalty and questioned: “Where is our Queen, where is her flag?” In fact, countless people got themselves registered for a visit to the grave of the “people’s princess”.

Image Credit: Healingtouchtherapies