I’m trying to forget the moment she walked in. Stage Number 4, Mehboob Studios, Bandra. I was sitting inside, coiled and tense, while the production folks fussed with the lighting. With movie stars, you sense and smell before you see. The waft of something strong materialised as a vision in athleisure, aviators, a messy bun. But the skin, man. Skin is the calling card of showbiz. Hers was like marble with a wet polish. It made the face look closed off and categorical.
I was the new guy there, the cricketer doing his first advertisement. The betting ads with the lads didn’t count. You arrived as a brand only after you did your first consumer product with a Hindi film actress. I know she played up my awkwardness in an interview. But actually I took to fame and cameras quite easily. I talk sheepishly to the press about not getting used to the attention. That’s one of the little lies we tell to appear humble to the public.
But it’s true that I’d come from nowhere. Six years ago, I was playing tape-ball cricket and riding a motorbike under billboards of her face in Sangli. My life changed overnight after I was scouted by the country’s richest sports franchise. You tear up a season of the Indian Premier League for the Mumbai Rockets and next moment, you’re jetting around the world on an industrialist’s private plane. And then you’re trying to play it cool when Nisha Sharma rocks up to you and snaps, Saurabh, you think we can wrap this up in a couple of hours?
When he introduced himself at the shampoo shoot, I knew he was playing the fake humility card. I do it all the time. It’s a cheap thrill. I go into business meetings and say ‘Hi, I’m Nisha Sharma’ as if they don’t know. He’d almost won India a T20 World Cup. As if the picture of him sitting forlorn on the Lord’s balcony wasn’t splashed across every newspaper and feed.
I still look at that photo sometimes. But I have to google it because I’ve purged my phone of his traces. He looks so young, so vulnerable. It makes me think of the times we argued. My anger would dissolve when I’d see this six-footer make himself small, wounded by my words. It made me want to envelop him with everything I felt. Sometimes, I hurt him only so I could make up to him.
I was going to Himachal for a long outdoor schedule. I had to dash to the airport after the shoot. Saurabh was meant to take me by the waist and whisper a silly catchphrase in my ear: ‘No dandruff, no tension.’ He pulled me lightly towards himself, and then fluffed the line. My team was on edge. But I felt a frisson with each take. My face was opening up, my body dropping its guard. His eyes were soft and kind.
When the shot was okayed, he asked about my ‘skincare game.’ I burst out laughing. Guts. He had a strong Marathi accent. He looked into my eyes when he spoke. We exchanged numbers, pretending it was only to share my dermatologist’s contact. A cricketer and an actress, a story as old as time. Or at least as old as Sharmila-ji and Tiger Pataudi.
The texting was fast and furious. In those days, the tabloids were fanning the embers of her split with Siddharth Kapoor. Why me, I wondered. But not for long because I was the flavour of the season. Highest run-getter at the T20 World Cup, a mainstay in the Test squad, earmarked for future captaincy by the Skipper himself. I’d just moved my parents into my sea-facing flat. Another IPL was around the corner and all eyes were on me. You don’t get to where I had by dwelling on people’s motives.
She was shooting near Shimla. She said she was sick of the industry, tired of the constant scrutiny. On Instagram, she posted aesthetic photos of the landscape with philosophical captions about love and light. I don’t judge celebrities who do that because I know it’s sincere. When you are that sort of famous, my therapist said, you need to believe in something beyond your own myth.
Her mask peeled away on WhatsApp. She was warm, spontaneous, open about her insecurities. I found it incredulous that she’d cared to file away things I’d only mentioned in passing. Attractive people can float through life, but she was interested in things beyond herself. I had to ask her to slow down because I couldn’t keep up with her thoughts. No one’s ever told me that, she said, it’s kind of nice.
One night, when I was eating dinner with Aai-Baba, she video-called me. I hadn’t told my small-town parents that I was texting Nisha Sharma. We don’t talk about such things. I excused myself saying it’s a call from Mrs Samtani, owner of the Mumbai Rockets. Nisha was drinking wine in her hotel room.
Meet me when I’m back in town, she said tipsily.
The date was a delicate operation, as it has to be for two public personalities who’ve had nothing to do with each other. A pan-Asian restaurant in a Lower Parel hotel arranged a private section for us. His people sent mine a list of dietary restrictions. The hotel manager was told the rules: no phones on serving staff, no asking for photographs, no guests in line of sight.
We arrived separately and entered through the back door. He was wearing a fuckboy cap that reminded me of Siddharth. I asked him to take it off, and he looked virtuous again. His hair was thinning, he said. We ate steamed bok choy and truffle dimsums and talked about properties and fitness. He asked me questions about specific scenes from my films: how I prepared, how much was improvised. I haven’t met a professional male cricketer yet who isn’t obsessed with films. To them, the movie business always feels like something within reach.
He spent a lot of time online. It was one way to fill up empty evenings on tour. What about going out, meeting women, I asked. Too many phone cameras around, the Cricket Board is always watching. So the boys get together and make Reels in hotel rooms. Ex-cricketers grumble about how much money there is in the game now, but there’s a lot to be lost too.
I knew why he read everything they said about him. The rafters were chanting his name then. But one wrong step and the rabble turns against you. I’d been through the cycle of adulation and rejection. ‘Slay him, slay him’ they’d say in unison from the cheap seats. When the tide turned against him, I was left with the old pang of wanting to protect him from this fickle and broken world.
I hadn’t been on a date with an actress before but I’d met some of them socially. They expected you to amuse them and moved on quickly if you didn’t. But Nisha took the initiative. We went to her place after that dinner. I, a 27-year-old grown man, called my parents and told them I’m staying over at my friend Ajinkya’s place.
I was somewhat clumsy in bed but she was forgiving and gentle.
We tiptoed around each other the morning after. I wanted to sit inside her brain and inhale what she was thinking. She kissed me after eating cold Oreos. They don’t get soggy that way, she said. My fridge is always stocked with Oreos now, no matter what diet I’m on. I have to have them cold.
The IPL began. We met clandestinely at the team hotel. There are corners of my heart where I don’t admit anything from outside. The therapist recently told me it’s an only child thing. But a few minutes with Nisha and I’d feel those walls start to crumble. When I was alone again, I’d wonder if I gave too much of myself away. I envied and admired how she seemed to go all-in, like only the present moment mattered.
She’d just signed a biopic of the Punjabi poetess Amrita Pritam. A performer like her, with serious acting chops, wasn’t irrelevant in her thirties, but something had soured after her breakup with Siddharth. She’d been frozen out of the family-run camps. A big producer had described her as ‘passé’ in his bitchy way.
When she spoke about Siddharth, I felt hemmed in, like I couldn’t escape who I was and where I was from. I could hit a cricket ball long but I didn’t have a hairy chest or a manor I was born in. My wrist was too thin for the kind of chunky watch men like him wore. When news of our affair broke, I came across a tweet with our pictures side by side. The caption said: Omg!! Nisha Mommy really went from Daddy to Twink!! But these are our times and this is the life I’ve chosen. A random tweet can feel like a punch in the gut.
He was inexperienced for a famous man, too eager to please. I found myself holding back, not wanting to overwhelm him. He looked like he wanted to say things and the words were stuck in his throat. I felt like he was thinking about my previous lovers. But there was an earnestness about his efforts that melted me. He even moaned when he came. Later, in the dark, he held me close and kissed the back of my shoulders. The next morning, after I kissed him, he pulled me towards himself and whispered, ‘No dandruff, no tension.’
I booked a room for myself at the Trident, where the Rockets were holed up for the duration of the IPL. Saurabh wasn’t ready to go public yet but tongues were already wagging. A blind item on the Mumbai Masala Instagram page triggered our first fight. I asked him why he was getting so stressed. You don’t understand, he told me, I’m new to all this; it might just be another thing for you. I lost it. I had no time for allusions. His cageyness was beginning to grate.
A week later, he smashed a century at the Wankhede. I was in the VIP box at the invitation of Mrs Samtani. The giant screen showed a sexy, curly-haired woman with a poster that said ‘Marry me, Saurabh Gaikwad.’ The socialite Shobhaa Mirchandani turned towards me with a conspiratorial wink and called him the most eligible bachelor in the country. I went back home feeling unmoored. He texted saying he wanted to blow a kiss to me when he got his hundred. In full view of the cameras and on national television.
Why didn’t you then, I replied coldly.
The Skipper knew what was up. His was the ultimate small-town story. From a backwater in Bihar, he’d risen to the top of the game. His fan following was like a cult leader’s. We were in Hyderabad when he called me to his room. You know what you’re getting into, he asked. There was a history there: an affair with an actress that had coincided with a drastic dip in form. There was also a girlfriend from the hometown. They had gone to school together and now she was his wife.
We’d never spoken about it, man to man. Look, he told me, everything is going well, why rock the boat. They are from a different world, some rivers can’t be bridged. The Skipper often spoke in aphorisms and metaphors but then he said something directly. Look at the age difference, you’re in different phases of your lives. You’re going up, she’s on her way down. Soch le, he said. Think about it.
I was also thinking about my parents. They were outwardly simple but calculative in spirit. They’d clung to me tighter after I made it. They viewed my success as a form of payback. But I don’t think they knew any other way. Nor were they curious about expanding their horizons. My mother is happiest gossiping about relatives, my father when he’s left alone to watch videos forwarded on WhatsApp groups.
Nisha grew up in an army family in Delhi. Her father gave talks at the India International Centre, her mother had a killer sense of humour, her brother was a fashion photographer. They were the kind of people who’d have friends over for drinks on a weekday. I couldn’t stop overthinking about how Nisha’s planet would collide with mine.
I’ve not been brought up to go with the flow, especially when shit gets real. But I did something very uncharacteristic later that summer. I was going to play a Test series in England. I asked Nisha if she’d like to come along. I wanted her to want me because she could have anyone she wanted.
I was older by six years but it was Saurabh’s view of the world that was set in stone. But I understood the neurosis of fresh fame—I’d lived through it in my mid-twenties. I’ve always been deeply desired but the yearning of complete strangers is a drug. A lack of interest seems like a personal affront. You want to preserve your mystique while giving the impression that you are somewhat available. It’s quite like a game, and there are people paid to advise you about all this.
I was surprised when he asked me to join him on the big UK tour. I was still smarting about his hesitancy to make it official, but I folded without protest. Mumbai had become stultifying. The noise of construction was everywhere. The highways were a hellscape. Some of my mutual friends with Siddharth were giving me the cold shoulder. A month’s getaway would be good. It would put me in the right headspace for the Amrita Pritam shoot.
I met the other wives and girlfriends in London. They wore their spiffiest boots and jackets, and did their best to act casual. It was quite endearing actually. But I think I messed up the dynamic among these simple sweet women who were overly grateful for the golden ticket they had been given. I would later be told how important it was for professional cricketers to be with someone homely. They travelled too much, the pressure was unreal, they needed someone to hold up the domestic fort. It was always that word: homely.
For a brief, mad moment, I fantasised about being Saurabh’s trailing spouse, following him to cricket grounds around the world with an infant or two in tow. When I told him this, he gave me his nervous laugh. He thought of me as someone who means everything she says. That scared him.
He was a different person abroad, away from the cameras and the chaos. I remember one perfect evening in London. We bought sandwiches and Pimm’s from a supermarket and then went up Primrose Hill. We sat there in our caps and hoodies, through a 9pm sunset, and watched the lights come on in the office buildings of the City. In the shadows, we were just another couple enjoying an evening out.
Those weeks were an education in his quirks: he brushed aggressively, chewed his fingernails and washed his hair under a scalding shower. On the morning after an exhilarating win at The Oval, he paced excitedly on the balcony of our hotel room. He was on the phone with his manager, discussing endorsement deals. I sat on the bed and watched him through the glass, thinking back to the heady days after the release of Pyaar Hota Ek Baar Hai.
The early flush of stratospheric success makes you expansive. In my case, I forgave everyone I felt wronged by. In our part of the world, there’s always someone who’s out to get you. If you don’t have enemies, you must invent them. That’s what keeps many of us going. They’d said he would struggle against the swinging ball in England. That morning we posted on his Instagram: ‘If you come at the King, you best not miss.’
I was middling everything in England. For a batter, it’s all about the sound of leather hitting willow. There’s a right sound and a wrong sound, and those dictate the rhythm of your days. On that tour, my bat felt like an extension of my body: a record 784 runs in a five-match series. I was seeing the leather ball like a football.
I wanted to bottle this form. Muthu, our video analyst, said that I wasn’t doing anything too different from the usual, but I badgered him until he said, This is Lord Ayyappa’s blessing so just accept it with gratitude.
I talked about it with Nisha, my fear of losing the magic, the touch. She told me about a recurring nightmare. It’s always a street in New York City. The director is always Martin Scorsese, who I hadn’t heard of until I moved to Mumbai. He says ‘action’ but she’s rooted to the spot. The dialogue is stuck in her chest, her palms feel clammy, the director throws down his headset.
Now, I often think about that time, when we shared our nightmares over breakfast, waded into the freezing sea in Cornwall, took turns to be the little spoon on cosy hotel beds far away from home. I feel a knot in my stomach when I think about the genuine effort she made with the other girls; the way she coaxed them to look this way and that while taking their pictures for social media. They couldn’t quite believe they were getting styling advice from Nisha Sharma. Over an Italian meal, she told me she was secretly writing a film she wanted to direct.
On the last day of the tour, we drank a lot of wine. She was wearing a printed green dress I will never forget. In the backseat of a black cab, we kissed until our lips were tender. London sped past us in the lamplight. Everything seemed possible.
The unravelling started with an Instagram post by Rajesh Ramaiah. He was the executive chef of a fancy restaurant in Mayfair. He was also a cricket tragic, like so many middle-aged Indian men who moved abroad in their twenties and then never came back. He wanted a photograph of Saurabh as a keepsake.
In that image, the two of them are beaming in the foreground but a stray arm appears at the edge of the frame. That was enough for the internet’s amateur sleuths. A few months earlier, I’d worn the same printed green dress to a promotional event at a college festival in Ahmedabad. Some accounts even zoomed into a black onyx ring I used to wear then.
Throughout the tour, we’d been careful to ensure we weren’t photographed together. But Saurabh was in an exuberant mood that night. His senses had been dulled by success and by the chef’s Malvani prawn curry. I had no recollection of this photo being taken. I think I might have been in conversation with the Skipper’s wife. We’d been having pinot noir all evening.
I was shooting for Pritam in Punjab when my publicist Dolly called. Don’t stress, okay, but it’s all over social media, she said, It’ll blow over, you don’t have to say anything.
My mother called me, harried and indignant. Don’t these jobless people have anything better to do, she asked. My people traced the original post back to a page called Nisha Sharma Fan Club Original. If they can make you, they can also break you, I told my mother. You would know, I added cattily. I like to think that I’ve made my peace with the cost of celebrity, but the cracks show up from time to time.
Saurabh was in transit to the Caribbean. By the time he landed in Barbados, #nishabh was trending on Twitter, Siddharth Kapoor fans were spewing hate on his Instagram and entertainment websites had already put out the clickbaits. England seemed like a distant dream. The outside world was back to buzzing around our ears like houseflies.
I wanted Saurabh to call me and say it’s not a big deal. The furtiveness was thrilling initially, but its appeal had worn off. I wanted to power walk out of airports holding his hand, and playfully tell the waiting paparazzi they’d be the first to know about wedding bells.
My actress friend Sunaina told me that famous men like to keep their options open. But I knew Saurabh wasn’t like that. His problem was that he was tethered to his past, to the unchanging moral lines he had learned in his constricted childhood. He fell in love with me because I smelt like freedom. He was ashamed of me because I was free. But he never said he loved me, and he never said he was ashamed of me.
Someone in the chain had fucked up. My manager forwarded the email he’d sent the restaurant. There was a line there: ‘No photographs to be uploaded to social media without explicit permission from Saurabh Gaikwad’s management team.’ We could have asked the chef to delete the post but screenshots live forever.
I had four missed calls from my parents but I wanted to talk to Nisha first. It was late at night in Ludhiana. What do you want to do, I asked her, trying to maintain an even voice. I was beyond annoyed at her nameless fans, who counted the number of breaths she’d take. Think about it: these were a bunch of strangers who could identify her from a sleeve and a ring.
Hiding it is exhausting, she said. You don’t get it, I said, I’ve worked hard to build my own identity. I don’t want to be known as Nisha Sharma’s boy toy. I regretted it the moment I said it. You should have thought about it before sleeping with me, she fired back. I could conjure up her face in my head. When she was upset, her nostrils flared and her lips quivered. It always unnerved me how she could be breathing fire one moment and then completely shut me out in the next.
I was weak. When I argued with her, I felt it in my body. It was like a bad workout. My neck picked up a dull ache and I lost my appetite. I hadn’t used the word ‘love’ yet, because I didn’t think it was that. You’re embarrassed by me, she said. Her hard voice suddenly broke. You have boxes for everything you want from life and I only fit into them as some kind of conquest. Then the line went dead at the other end.
Nisha was used to having her way. She was privileged, beautiful, accomplished. Life had always presented her with options, and it seemed to me like it did so in the Japanese lacquerware boxes she had decorated her minimal house with. I, on the other hand, had grown up amidst a culture of accumulation where things were hoarded not because they were useful but because there was a time when they hadn’t been there at all. That was the unspoken chasm between us.
I spoke to my parents on video call the next day. I know you’re flying high, my mother said through her tears, but think about us. I’ve read all about her affairs in the papers, I know what these film actresses are like. Don’t forget where you come from, my father added, we will find you a nice, homely girl.
He wasn’t someone who could compartmentalise. All aspects of his life blended into each other. He’d never really had girl trouble before, so he was completely out of depth in the Caribbean. The first few days, he stayed up late texting me, trying to work things out. We’d make up and then circle back to the same arguments. On the telecast, I could see the bags under his eyes.
After the first Test, I told him we’ll talk after he gets back. But he said no, he could only get his head straight if I wasn’t fighting with him. I thought that was cute until I didn’t. His parents were giving him a hard time, too. I was the bold actress with questionable morals. I hadn’t brought up marriage but it was the elephant in the Gaikwads’ room. They couldn’t conceive of a relationship without it as the end goal.
He wasn’t a cool guy. He fretted, he overthought. On the good days, this quality translated as sensitiveness, as attentiveness. It’s what had drawn me towards him in the first place. It was so different from the spaced-out vibe of spoilt filmy men. Once, he told me he used to be so sorted before he met me. It was painful to watch him become less himself in real time. It was more painful knowing I was the cause for it.
There was another match to stoke his fire. A viral video of me leaving a Japanese restaurant with Sarabjeet Dhillon, who was playing Sahir in the Amrita biopic. A couple of outlets had put out insinuating articles. Yes, I’d hooked up with him while we were shooting a film many years ago, but he was not much more than a co-star at the time. I tried to explain to Saurabh that it was natural for co-stars to hang out, especially to build chemistry for an intense romantic part.
Why didn’t you tell me about Sarabjeet, he asked. When was the last time you fucked? The language shocked me. What happened to gentle, tender Saurabh, I wondered. The one who’d ask to be held close when we went to bed. Jealousy makes a monster of men. His beloved Skipper, whose sagely persona I usually found phoney, may have been right. Our lives until then had deposited us on opposite shores. We could take a boat to cross sometimes but there was no bridge. We were already tired of rowing.
I was dropped for the last Test in Guyana. The Skipper told the press I was out with a neck strain, which wasn’t entirely inaccurate. But basically I was wrecked by everything that was going on. An English allrounder had recently taken a break to sort his personal life out. Mental health was the talk of the Western cricket press. But it’s different for Indian cricketers. You take your gas off the pedal, and there are fifty other guys waiting to pounce on your place. Next thing you know, you’re spending your days on dance reality shows and giving interviews about being a forgotten talent.
After the Test, the Skipper took me down for a coffee by the beach. He had a lot of time for me, because he saw himself in me. A grey and foaming Atlantic stretched beyond the hotel wall. I know you’re young, he said, you can have some fun. But remember: no matter how far you travel, you end up craving water from your own well.
I bombed in the T20 series too. Uncles in sports journalism, paunchy men who’d never picked up a bat, wrote long tweet threads analysing what had gone wrong. Some of my teammates came up to me to sympathise, but I know they enjoyed seeing me suffer. Those waiting in the wings for a chance were licking their lips. My aura was fading.
Once, when we were children, Aai-Baba had taken my cousin and me to the national park in Tadoba. We didn’t spot a tiger. Seeing our dejected faces, a forest guide said: You may not have seen the tiger, but it has definitely seen you. This lifted my cousin’s spirits but it filled me with a kind of sticky dread. I recalled that feeling during the long layover at Heathrow. There was something elusive about Nisha. She could tread softly in the world and still be sought after. I was a mere visitor in her territory.
When he came back from the West Indies, he looked like he’d aged a couple of years. He’d lost his levity, the spring in his step. Had I done this to him? How had everything changed so quickly? Why did everything have to be so difficult with him?
One night, with his head in my lap, he said that being with me wasn’t good for him. I think I will be happier by myself, those were his words. I’d been preparing for this but to hear him say it so baldly still felt like a hammer blow. He was unformed, that was the truth. He had one foot in his past life, and the future was happening to him too soon. That’s just the nature of sudden fame in this country. Nothing can prepare you for it.
What are you so afraid of, I asked.
Of not knowing you fully, he said. Of you getting up one morning and walking away because you’re bored of me.
Those were not the only things he was afraid of. His battle was with himself. He was afraid of transcending his skewed sense of duty, of being tied down, of making choices. He thought he’d lose his gift. But I spared him the indignity of spelling all that out for me.
Walking away is what you’re doing right now, I said.
I have to, he said, forgive me if you can.
On the morning of our final night together, I watched him sleep. He had a tick of gently biting his lower lip as he slept, making him look like the beatific boy he was when he didn’t have to play the hero. When he woke up, I didn’t let him kiss me. He wanted a souvenir: a worn-out yellow tee shirt I used to wear to bed. He said it smelt like me. We cried, hugged, and then he was gone. That is literally how it ended.
From the maelstrom of what I was feeling, it took me a few months to separate the strands of rage, love, disappointment, regret. But at least I didn’t blame myself the way I used to. If he cared enough, he would have fought for us. Perhaps it would have been a failure, but at least it would have been an honourable one. Maybe I would get bored of him. But the difference is that I was ready to give it my all. He wasn’t. There’s no need to understand anything else.
It’s been a couple of years since that last night in her apartment. I’m in Sydney for another World Cup. On the bus ride to training the other day, we crossed a cinema. I saw a poster for Tujhe Phir Miloongi. There she was, Nisha Sharma as Amrita Pritam.
A charge cut through my spine. It happens every time I see her face. It’s like being on the sets of the shampoo commercial again. I feel the pinpricks of the past, blunted now but still very much there.
When I was with Nisha, a life with her seemed impossible. But now, when Sundays get boring, only a life with her seems possible. I crave her loud laughter, her simmering rage, the feel of her fingers in my hair. I wait for those moments to pass. The tang of the past is only overwhelming when your present tastes like nothing. I train hard, I travel the world, I buy things my parents didn’t allow themselves to even dream about. So I just have to breathe deeply and wait for those moments to pass.
And yet I couldn’t stop myself from sneaking out of the hotel that night. I settled into a seat at the back of the cinema, and allowed the frames to wash over me. Nisha was born to play this role. Both women wielded their words like a weapon, both couldn’t be contained. Nisha had transformed into Amrita but I could still see through her disguise.
There’s a scene towards the end where she’s reciting some lines in the radio station. Imroz, Amrita’s companion, stands outside the cabin and looks through the glass. Nisha’s eyes pool with silent tears like they used to, her voice cracks. But she adjusts her glasses, clears her throat, and recites Amrita’s lines:
Rall gayi si es vich ek boond tere ishq di
Esse layi main zindagi di saari kudattan pee layi
Because a drop of your love was mixed in
I drank all of life’s bitterness
People, and the press, had many names for our relationship: affair, involvement, liaison. My favourite was dalliance. It sounded flattering, like I was a European arthouse actress who’d spent a summer aiding a young director’s sexual awakening. It made me feel very Monica Bellucci. But this is India, and life is not Notting Hill. Everything has an afterlife if you’re famous, and even supposed well-wishers never let you forget.
Civilians can unfollow, block, ghost. But what if you were seeing the hottest thing in Indian cricket? He’s in every second commercial on your screen, dancing badly but enthusiastically. His Instagram thirst traps are news items. His face stares at you from billboards. When he’s selling you a refrigerator in a maroon suit, you think about the perfect falsetto of his snoring. When he takes his shirt off for a deodorant commercial, you know they’ve airbrushed the birthmark on his left shoulder blade. You’re so alive to his name still. When it’s mentioned, even in passing, it makes you start, as if someone is calling out to you.
It’s the worst now, when the World Cup is on, and as the nation rests its hopes on his slender shoulders. India needs 41 runs in 12 balls to beat Pakistan at the Sydney Cricket Ground. You’re sitting next to Sarabjeet, the man you live with. He is a wildly talented actor and treats you like a goddess.
Babe, you don’t have to watch, he says considerately. Let me turn it off and we can go for a drive. Men in love are something else.
No no, you insist, don’t be silly. Those things are long past. It’s such a crazy game! Do you think we’ll make it?
I don’t think so babe, 41 in two overs is too much.
But it’s not too much for Saurabh. Only I was too much for Saurabh. He steps out of his crease and smashes the world’s fastest bowler for six. He makes room on the legside and cheekily scoops the wicket keeper. He runs like his life depends on it. I know it does.
When it’s done, he walks to the centre of the pitch and takes off his helmet. He puts his lips to his bat and blows kisses to the spectators in the Bradman Stand. He turns around and does it again. And so he completes a circle on the spot, blowing bat-kisses to the adoring masses, taking it in until his teammates mob him.
Fireworks go off outside my window on Juhu Beach.
Come, I tell Sarabjeet, let’s go for that drive.