It was a picture that ricocheted around the world and drew much comment, most of it in the form of shocked dismay.
When Barack Obama chose to lean over like a gleeful kid at a rock concert to pose for a picture with fellow members of the audience, Denmark's Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt and Britain's David Cameron, at Nelson Mandela's memorial service in Johannesburg this week, most thought his image of world statesman would be dented.
I beg to differ. In a world of ever increasing PR spiel, fixed moments of photo op, measured statements and managed public images, Obama's 'oops-he didn't!' moment for me was endearing and delightful.
It reminded us, the public, that he too shared feelings of awe, delight and excitement like the rest of us ordinary human beings.
That he too, for all his pomp, power and pelf, was human.
More and more, I feel that the slips between the cup and lip, the unguarded moments when people display their real and true selves and when they set aside their carefully constructed TRP-driven speeches are the ones that will be most cherished.
We, after all - beyond our opinions and positions, class and caste, our skin colour or sexual orientation - are the same.
And when we see ourselves - especially our own vulnerabilities - reflected in others, that's when we value them the most.
Another instance of this shared humanity was brought home to me again in an unguarded TV moment.
Rahul Kanwal, the dashing and fiery Headlines Today anchor, was interviewing newly-defeated Sheila Dikshit for his channel. Kanwal, known for his outspokenness and intolerance of hypocrisy or hyperbole, under normal circumstances would have, I am pretty sure, unleashed the full power of his verbal arsenal to demolish the three-time chief minister voted out of power the day before.
But that's when the magic moment happened. At the end of the interview, Kanwal, aware that in front of him sat a defeated woman old enough to be his grandmother, a politician of grace and dignity, turned human.
He thanked her as a citizen of Delhi for the work she had done for his state. He tried to make her feel not so bad for losing. He attempted to soften the blow.
Purists and ideologues will harrumph at his departure from his calling - "no sympathy, no bias," they will say. But I, a fellow journalist, faced many a time with the quandary of such situations, where one's professional ethics wrestle against one's human instincts, saluted him for this sensitivity.
My respect for him rose, especially because I knew that when she'd been in power, he had never pulled his punches with her.
And, of course, in the great uproar following the reprehensible Supreme Court judgment on Section 377, in the dun and fury of well-argued positions and fiery outrage, the one moment, the singular moment, that told me why it was so important for people to rise up and fight for gay rights was not eloquence or legal explanation - it was the silent sobbing of a single gay man on one of the TV channels, who, unable to keep his composure minutes after he'd heard the awful news, had simply broken down.
He had done the unthinkable - he had cried on national TV.
That single, unguarded, vulnerable and very human moment perhaps did more for the cause than any other, according to me.
Moments of truth, unguarded moments of human expression, moments when we show the world who we really are - they are increasingly the most important moments we have. They remind people that regardless of every thing else - we belong to the human race.
Malavika Sangghvi is a Mumbai-based writer malavikasangghvi@hotmail.com
