The various flavours of coffee

“Remember that Dove-Yahoo contest, the one about Real Beauty? I think I might just write something on that.”


“Waxing eloquent on a little brook, a baby girl, a profound poem, eh? How alpha male."

“Yes, get me a pink javelin for my next birthday.”

“But seriously. Hardly your genre. What inspires this tectonic shift in writing?”

“One should always venture to expand his realms. Alexander wouldn’t be he, if he had stuck to Greece. Also, I am a very deep and profound person and often think about things like real booty erm beauty, duty, even annuity.”

“I should have known, there is a big prize.”

“You think that money could corrupt a purist like me? Good going, Sherlock. Coffee?”

“You know, it is difficult to give it a specific definition. Beauty can mean a lot of things.”

“Or maybe we don’t have to build a cage. Words can be beautiful too. All one needs to know is how to weave them into an essence.”

“When I was a little girl, I thought Steffi Graf was the most beautiful woman in the world. And Salman was so handsome. I wanted them to get married to each other. Ha, back then I knew beauty only in its skin.”

“While I gazed admiringly at Pamela Anderson running on that California beach. What a woman.”

“Eww. You men are such idiots. Absolutely no class.”

“She was saving people from drowning. What a heroic woman. I’d give her a Bharat Ratna if I could”

“If Miss Anderson is going to be the essence of your essay, may God bless you. But it is a very ‘Miss World’ question, what true beauty means to you.You expect a person to immediately start looking serious, have that optimistic gleam in their eye before they set forth declaring how true beauty is not skin deep, and how it encompasses grace and sensitivity, strength and compassion in equal measures. Inner beauty, is of course, far greater than external beauty. And they are right, no doubt. But isn’t that being too cliched? Surely, one expects more."


"Yes, let convention be damned. Remember when India won the cricket world cup. In the immediate moments after Dhoni’s six, a team ran beserk around a field, with Tendulkar in the lead. In those few moments, as the screen displayed ‘World Champions’, as I looked around, a thousand others laughed, cried, screamed, sang, prayed, waved their flags and pumped their fists in glorious ecstasy around me at the Wankhede. In Sachin's smile, in his team mates’ gay abandon, in the words on the screen and in the people around me, there was a beauty, surreal like I quite hadn't seen before."

"I bet you were weeping buckets. But I think I know what you mean by surreal. This goes back to 2001. It was a dark night"

"Stormy too?"

"Shh. Pass the coffee. It was around 4 am, and I was walking on a narrow rail track with a bunch of friends, in the Western Ghats, in the middle of nowhere. Minutes earlier, we had alighted at Castlerock station, having planned to trek the twenty odd kilometers to Doodhsagar waterfalls by foot. As we plodded along, my friend grabbed my jacket to show me a shooting star. I missed it, but a moment later, I saw one on my right. Within seconds, the whole sky was ablaze with shooting stars. Not in tens, but in hundreds. So stunned were we, that even after the spectacle ended, we remained transfixed for a few minutes. It takes some doing to silence a group of college kids, but we were absolutely numbed by the sight. The next day the newspapers reported that there had been a meteor shower the previous night. The clear skies of the Ghats had held my hand and knocked on the gates of beauty.I had never seen such scenes before.

"I wonder if it were the Ghats, and not the Planetarium."

"More interestingly, neither story had any mention of love."

"Criminal. A conversation is hardly one, if it does not have an element of love in it, no?"

"Touche!"

"Sometime, somewhere I did fall in love. And when I did, I was overwhelmed by it. In it, in her, I found myself. There's no feeling as beautiful as that.

You see, the point is true beauty cannot be captured in one definition. But yes, true beauty is a feeling or sensation that triggers a sense of joy, or wonder or admiration in the soul it seduces. It can be fleeting, or permanent, but while it lasts it causes a positive change in the workings of your heart."

“Hmm, look at those young girls. I wish I was sixteen too, not a care in the world.”

“At the risk of quoting Miss Jane Austen, it sometimes happens that a woman is handsomer at twenty-six than she was ten years before."

“Talking about me?”

“Again, coffee?”

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This article is a part of the indiblogger and Yahoo! India - Dove contest "What does Real Beauty Mean to you?"

This is where you should vote if you like me enough, right here . Non indiblogger users can click on the fb app. here. Cheers!





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Little Boys, Big Boys

There is a nine year old boy who stays in the house opposite the Narayanan family’s. It is his grand parents’, so usually it is only in the summer vacations that we find this diminutive little being in our midst. The rest of the time he is at school in Chennai.

Like most other men and women his age, he is fascinated by Hector, so every evening he comes in his little feet to our house. Hector himself has no affection for anything that is below puberty years, or below five feet (Mum at five feet one just about passed his acceptance standard). So whenever these little children come to him with shining eyes, he pouts as if he were a pretty princess and gracefully sashays down the length of the hall and burrows under the sofa muttering under his breath,

‘ When a dog goes under a sofa and leaves only his butt in view,
you should really know what he thinks of you.’

Shantanu, however, does arouse some enthusiasm in my mother. It is a welcome change in a day largely indulged in looking after man, dog, kitchen and garden. In his arrival, also approaches the entertainer in Rekha Narayanan, and both potter about the kitchen discussing the latest trends and fashions in the life of a nine year old. I suspect that Rekha has been secretly going online and reading up on Rebecca Black while I am asleep.

Kids these days are very different from how we were. This little four foot something imp has a facebook account, loves basketball and attends cooking classes after school. Whatever happened to only being good at cricket and nothing else! Facebook at nine? Whatever happened to staying in parks long after a hard day’s game and discussing which girl ended up as your ‘love’ in that delightful invention called ‘FLAMES’. A boy attending cooking classes, and knowing the difference between asafedita and baby corn? Yeah yeah, call me sexist, look down upon me, cheer for the new metrosexual India, but in your hearts you all know it is the die-hard cricketer who can’t cook anything except Maggi you all lust for.

We do have our similarities. Shantanu hates girls and swears that he will never have anything to do ‘with that lot’. At that age, I felt much the same way. Just like R K Narayanan's, neither did my 'Malgudi Days' have any trace of err maals. We didn’t see quite the point of why God would invent such a gender. Back then, Gaurav and I swore to stay ‘brahmachari’ all our lives. Dear lord.

Every time the poor lad comes to our house, he peers at me through his big glasses as I challenge him for mock fights. I let him beat me at arm wrestling but if he makes fun of me, he is made aware that he is nano seconds away from being stripped off his tee, or worse shorts. If he checks his facebook, I tease him about every girl in his list, and he screams so loud that Hector wishes it was his bones that he was gnawing at. When he sits behind me on the bike and holds my waist tightly because he is scared, I thank him for being such a physically affectionate girl friend, and the “put me down, PUT ME DOWN RIGHT NOW” is lost in the buzz of the engine. I think we like each other.

At regular intervals, Shantanu asks my mother, “why is your son like that?” You see Shantanu, I grew up in a house full of girls – sister, cousins, whatnot. They are brilliant, but my timidity only deserted me properly when I reached a Belgaum Engineering Boys Hostel. So when I do see a young boy anywhere in my breathing space, I find a brother whom I can bully, amuse or tease. To maybe build, inspire and make a man.

- NN


p.s Back in those brahmachari days, the sadistic souls that my parents were, they would keep teasing me that they’d marry me off to the girl who lived next door to us. So one day, shoving my 4th Standard Science book under my armpits, I marched solemnly up to my mother and leafed over to page 48. A red and blue picture of the male anatomy stared back at us.

“I’m going to cut mine off. Then I can’t have babies or get married”, I spluttered pointing an indignant ring finger at the pinkish looking reproductive system. Mother collapsed on the floor laughing, but I felt like a proud martyr then. Just think..what commitment, even at that age. Err thankfully nothing was ‘cut’ then or ever, and soon with the first signs of puberty and the airing of Baywatch, all earlier brahmachari pacts were forgotten.

For crying out aloud, what is wrong with our school science books? Those look less like a pair of kidneys and more like a potato farm. and why have you named that fried egg your gall bladder?#$#$@@$#@ If you show your reproductive organs in such an unreal form, how will any innocent boy ever understand what he was really going to sever off? Pah!

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Bhai-giri

The train sounded its siren, and they hugged each other just like all those who love each other do, on separation. My father and I swiftly turned our heads in every other direction, him staring hard at a bulb, me discovering sudden fascination for a dust bin. They might be married, but that’s no reason for us to be unfazed, or at unperturbed ease when my sister hugs her husband. We are like that only.

But this is not that story. It is of a phone call, between two siblings.

That day as I picked up the phone, she greeted me with the familiar ‘Stinks’. It is a nickname we religiously refer to each other with. Sometimes, I respond back with a ‘hey Double Stinks’. When she asked me if I had time at hand to talk, I stared at the gmail chat blinking furiously, and ignored it.

“I have news for you.”

“You have finally realized that I am superior to you, and have come to beg for forgiveness?”

“It’s amazing how consistently bad your jokes are.”

“Tell me what you have to say. There is a community of women bawling out there because I am not replying to their chat messages.”

“Neeraj .... I like someone.”

It is difficult to crack a joke, or be narcissistic, when your sister says that.

Remember Rocky Balbao in Rocky Balboa? Spraying the villains with thousands of bullets?
Remember smashing a wall to smithereens with your fist? No? Oh that was Sunny Deol. Okay,remember defeating your sister at arm wrestling?

I suppose there comes a time in every man’s life when his younger sister tells him that. And when she does, he must close his eyes, concentrate, and try replacing those mental images of sledge hammers with sheep, raging infernos with flowering meadows, Genghiz Khan with Vinobha Bhave. He must take off that striking Indian male cloak sewed with a thread called possessiveness and expose a vest tagged growing up.

The situation demands poise and manner. He must know all that is essential about that other man. It is a tricky affair, he must ask sensible, pertinent questions. Understand the culture, the background, the values this rhododendron comes from. It is his sister, after all.

“Umm does he play cricket?”

“Haha, I knew you would ask that first up {laughs more}. I told him you would. You are so predictable, stinks”

“You haven’t answered the question.” A little more steel in the voice.

“He does. He’s played up till university level.”

“Err gulp university?” You go back to the day when they did not select you even for the University probables list. “Bet he wasn’t the best fielder of his college team.”

“Hahaha, I am sure my brother is the better player of the two.” And sometimes that’s all that girls need to get their way through boys. We are a defeated gender. I looked quite content after that.

“Hmm.”

“I am so glad that you are cool about this. Apu and Bhavna {cousins} are waiting to know your reaction.”

“ Well, it’s not as if you’ll stop seeing him if I ask you to, will you?”

“Of course not! As if I’d listen to you.”

“Err idiot, at least you could have let me feel that I had some hold in this matter.”

“Please! I’ll kick your ass. Oh you know, ……………”

I met him a few months later. Then, two years later in October 2009, they got married in Palakkad, Kerala. It was not as grand as Shashi Tharoor’s wedding a year later in the same town, but I never saw two people laugh and smile so much on stage as them while getting married. When I look at them, him following her around the house, I know of no two people who love each other more. It reminds me of happiness, of something, of someone. It makes me glad she chose him for he is everything he should be.

As long as I am better at cricket.

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Adam versus madam - railgaadi feat.

“Dude, F 21, getting in at the next stop!”

I opened a curious eye from under my blanket and looked below. A group of boys, all in the age bracket of 20 to 22 sat hunched in a circle on the lower berths. In perfect synchronization, the train sounded its siren in the background, to give this all important piece of information, the aura and atmosphere it so richly deserved.

“Dude, how does one impress a girl?”

I was fully awake now. It wouldn’t be right to lie down when such worldly noble matters were being discussed. And it really was a question of the ages, one that had troubled most of mankind throughout evolution.

“Dude, you need to be different. She should think you are cool. For eg. Tell her you are a dirt biker or a salsa dancer, she’ll fall head over heels for you”, said one of the species.

I wanted to tell him that all he looked like was a dirty broker but stopped short when the yokel began to gyrate his hips in a supposed seductive fashion. I do not want to be harsh to a young man but I could testify in a court of law that the copulation process between two giant pandas in full heat would be comparatively more graceful than what we were now being witness to.

“No man, who is interested in a biker? One has to be an achiever in college, like a sportsman or an accomplished musician.” I liked this second fellow, he seemed to be talking about people like me. Immediately, I was transported back to my engineering days, aaah the days when I lead my branch team to victories galore. Strangely none of those sequences had any women trying to molest me, nor even tear off their clothes and scream my name in joyful ecstasy, not even give me as much as a platonic hug. Pushing cricket behind, I moved my reverie to the college stage, the platform where I had moved my body just like Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy insisted we all should. But then again. Of course, there was the occasional girl who smiled at me in the corridor, but mostly I was only waltzing with Bashir, or Rohan or Sanjay or Muthuswamy. I was positively glum now.

“It is all in the mind, brothers”, a third hero declared, raising one eyebrow condescendingly. With one eyebrow raised high up on the forehead, he looked like a cross between the Rock and a cock. The poultry variety, not talking of err weapons here. “One should plays the game ofs the minds with the womans.” With that kind of grammar, he was playing good games with my mind too.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with all you guys. Can’t you ever stop talking about women?” the fourth guy denounced. There is always one fellow in every group who believes that by rebelling against popular culture, he can appear cooler. He was nodding his head in a knowing way, agreeing with whatever he had just said himself. Usually, such men take no more than thirty three seconds to keep their hearts on the platform whenever anything remotely close to the xx chromosome walks by. Che Guevera looked on grimly from the tee. The others kept quiet desperately trying to come up with some other topic.

“Anjali Bhatia”, said the one who had masterfully scanned the charts, in a sad voice. “Bhatia? Same surname as mine!” exclaimed the rebel. He was already seeing himself get wedded to her, I just knew it. Che Guevera cannot ever win over Shahrukh in India.

At that moment, she walked into the compartment and so pretty was she it seemed as if time had stilled forever. It was actually the train that had stopped but such occasions demand better metaphors. The rebel had completely given up his stance, and had closed his eyes in blissful submission to the fragrance that had suddenly overwhelmed the surroundings. A gentle breeze started from somewhere under our feet and swirled gently around our cheeks. Outside, a man was screaming at another, but it sounded like twenty one year old Lata Mangeshkar was singing at an opera.

And that’s when a man walked into the compartment, and held her hand. “Brother .. must be brother” each one of us were screaming inside our heads. The ‘brother’ now put his bag next to hers and they sat in a small space that rightfully should have been hers alone. They were not paying any attention to us. Instead, it seemed as if they were oblivious of the entire world, and only had eyes for each other. Must be long separated brothers and sisters. Strangely, the breeze and the fragrance had disappeared too.

I lay back on my berth, and the world was a monstrous place again.

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Happy Days

That first night, I looked into the pit, and he stared back at me intently. In that brief interlude, as we sized up each other, I knew that he had been named rightly. ‘Hector’, I whispered. A little bigger than my palm now, he’d grow up to be as valiant and handsome as Homer’s Prince of Troy, my heart said so.

I scooped him up from the big Videocon box that was meant to be his bed, and laid him on my pillow. As he tossed and turned and succeeded in pushing his butt up my nose, I hugged him. Minutes later, we both lay with our backs on the mattress, breathing equally heavily and occasionally kicking at the air in protest as and when a scene changed in our respective dreams. Tintin and Snowy never looked so macho together.

Remember the part where I prophesized he would be an epitome of courage as he grew up? I have never been more wrong in life. The next morning amma referred to him as ‘gullu’ and the name stuck on forever.

To understand his importance in our lives, firstly one has to know love, and secondly, speculate if the Narayanan family is sound in the head. For how else do you explain a girl (Nishi Narayanan) who’s leaving her home and city for the first time in her life, in pursuit of a post graduation, suddenly turn back from the gate, and run towards a now emotional mother and brother standing with outstretched arms, but push her way past them to hug the little pooch and burst into gallons of tears? I must insist that it was with the greatest dexterity that I slammed my embarassed arms back to their rightful positions (beside my frame) as soon as the first pangs of foolishness seeped in.

It is my belief that he would have been a forceful, assertive lad if we had spent more time together, but my moving to Belgaum for my engineering, and an over exposure to mother-daughter conversations made him a complete pansy. When I did return for the holidays, I did try to convince him that punching the air and snarling was more the stuff of what real men were made of, but he preferred rolling on his back and being tickled. I suppose I could consider this very ungainly of positions with all his organs in glaring public display and lying out in the open at gravity’s mercy as a sign of cheap, undignified and therefore, manly behavior. Good boy, Gullu.

As the days passed and he entrenched himself in our hearts and souls, we realized that there was absolutely nothing he was good at except for probably being, a physical manifestation of anything that is good in this world. He was never asked to perform any duties as a watchdog because when we did try to broach the subject, he snored even louder than normal. When I was scolded by my parents, and expected him to understand intuitively and come comfort me just like all those intelligent dogs did in story books, he would saunter around the house or gnaw at his bone with even more dedication. In our WWE games, I ‘choke slammed’ him every day but instead of feeling insulted and arousing pride to beat the crap out of me, he’d lick me as soon as his ears got out of his eyes’ way. The only time he looked positively embarrassed was when Air India refused to let us carry him in the passenger space, and hours later, he was brought out in the luggage trail with the rest of the suitcases, bristling with indignation.

A few months back, the doctors said he had a tumour. It may or may not be cancerous, we do not know yet, but somewhere the thought that something like that could touch him makes me furious with whoever’s up there. I will strike my bargains.

As I look at him now, I wonder if it’s possible that the little imp takes more space on the mattress than my six-foot father lying next to him. ‘Little’ he isn’t any longer, for he is twelve years old now, an old boy, and that gives him the license to be excused for not chasing cats even if they are sitting on his head, or not being the first to reach the door when the bell rings, sometimes not hear it ring at all.

As I tickle his stomach, amma asks me to ‘let the poor baby be’. He might be twelve, but he is still a baby? Maybe nothing has changed, even if it has. We still give him new names every day, and we still play with him like we did when we were ourselves children. We are still as fascinated by him as we were when he first came in.

You were named Hector, stud boy, beat that tumour till it begs for mercy.

‘The appearance of a furry head from under a chair is often all that a man needs to realize how much that one ‘okay’ added to his family.'

Stand up, for the champions, for the champions, stand up!

If only you knew Sachu, how I felt, when you held the cup in your hands and ran joyfully past me. Up in Sachin Tendulkar Stand, every single person screamed your name as hoarsely as they could, but I just stood there, mute and stunned, the world a blur. For that one moment, you did not hear me chant your name, neither did you see me close my eyes, but that is how we have always been. If only you knew how my heart cried and sang with happiness. April 2nd, 2011 stands frozen in time

The previous night, as I boarded the train to Mumbai, all that I carried was the ‘Cricket Revolucion’ tee and my flag, in the hope that if India won, I’d sprint to Marine Drive from wherever my television was, and join in the celebrations. Then 330 in night, Aneesh Madani told me that he was going to the Wankhede in the morning in a last ditch effort to try for tickets, and I could join him.

My heart was leaping even when our ‘local’ crossed Marine Lines and reached Churchgate. At 7 in the morning, the only people that stood outside the stadium were the caterers. Staring at the edifice, I wondered if I could ever enter it. Apparently not, because every broker was selling his tickets between Rs 40,000 to 1 lakh. At nine, the Mumbai police pushed us out of the road and we roamed helplessly around the sea front. As time wore on, and the clock struck eleven, I was getting desperate and ready to throw the entire 30k I had in my bank account. An hour later, a pan-chewing dog-eared fellow offered two East Stand tickets for 55,000. Somewhere down the road, a father was coating his son’s face with orange, white and green, and minutes later the son returned the favour. It looked magical but for the first time in my life, I wanted to become a pickpocket and run for my life with those two tickets.

“When you truly love something, the whole world conspires for you to achieve it.” At one, at our wit’s end, an IPL manager called Aneesh and told us he could offer us two tickets. We flew to the Trident Oberoi, and as Aneesh readied himself in the loo before meeting the man, I felt like kicking him for taking so much time. Later, my ticket read ‘P-374, Level 2, Sachin Tendulkar Stand’. Sachin Tendulkar Stand. How apt.

We ran to the stadium, calling up everyone we could to tell them of the news. I don’t know if I have ever enjoyed standing so much in a line that had over five thousand people representing it.

The Wankhede is beautiful.

For all the discomfort that an average Indian has had to endure to get into a stadium, it becomes all worth it once you are inside. We danced with the music, we sang with the music, we made every Lankan in the field know how much we despised him albeit only for the day. We let every single Indian know how much we loved him, even Sreesanth. With every run the Indian batsmen hit, our voices grew louder. Every time someone hit a boundary, Santosh shook his hips with an abandon that only Shilpa Shetty can match and if his id had not read “Security Officer Mumbai Police’, I would never have guessed so. It was also nice to know that police constables do have facebook profiles, and I will be featuring in one such photo album my hip as curvaceous as Santosh’s.

My father insists that we should not confuse sports with patriotism, but I fail miserably to heed his words. In my immature mind, sport has everything to do with loyalty and patriotism and whenever A R Rahman’s ‘Vande Mataram’ reverberated through the stadium, we looked skywards and sang with so much emotion that our very bodies arced backwards, and I felt goose pimples rippling through my flesh.

And then Dhoni hit his six and we were world champions. For 19 years, I had been waiting for this moment. For 19 years, I have been declaring before every world cup that ‘this time India will win’. For 19 years, I have felt hurt even angry when people poke jokes at my team, or call them ‘fixers’ or ‘chokers’, any single word against my team. If only you knew, India, that every time you have stepped onto a cricket ground, I have supported you as faithfully as I have loved. When I looked around, I knew there were several hundreds like me, each taking in the moment individually.

When Dhoni hit his six, a nation went wild. All I could was close my eyes, and soak in the moment. A dream has come true, in silence lay my feelings, and I felt numbed. A minute later, we were all hugging each other as tightly as Yuvraj had held on to Dhoni mid-pitch, some smiling, some crying and some hurling expletives at the rest of the world, pumping their fists in glorious aggression. And then Sachin Tendulkar came running out into the ground smiling, and in that one movement the entire thirty thousand plus in the Wankhede forgot every other emotion they were experiencing and the whole crowd chanted his name unitedly with a happiness that only he has received on a play ground. Later, as the team took the victory lap,as Yuvraj became all emotional and egged on the crowd to scream louder, the crowd roared madly. There was so much fire in his eyes, one knew how much it meant to him. There is so much one can say about a man by the way he plays his sport. I will never forget those moments ever.

As we packed into the crowded corridors on the way out, there was not an inch of space and we moved at a snail’s pace. Then someone from the back broke out singing, “We are the champions”, and every body in that hall joined in, making it the biggest chorus in Mumbai ever. The policewalas who had looked so tense and therefore rude, earlier in the morning, smiled broadly now, and the crowd hugged every single CPRF and Mumbai policeman on our way out. Out at Marine Drive, a city went ballistic in its celebrations, bikes, cars, roofs of card adorned with people and flags. It seemed as if the whole city had come out on one road and had gone berserk in its joy. We stood on top of police posts and waved our flags, we hopped moving cars’ roofs and sang, we went mad. What a shot Dhoni, tu stud hai yaar!

Hours later, when I finally returned to Bandra at 7 in the morning, they were still showing people celebration on television. Tomorrow, they will reward all the players obscenely, hold interviews with their families, friends, chaiwalas; ask celebrities what they think of India’s win; show countless repeats of the match; ask ex-players what they think; hold state functions and give honorary positions to players which they have no clue about. Dhoni knows it as well as we do, that it is a fickle country and we reward only when we win, never to improve. But that is tomorrow. Today let us just dance on the road with the man who walked out of the stadium, or the one who came all the way from Singapore just to see this game, or the one who ran till Marine Drive from his slum after the match - who does not even know where Sri Lanka is, but is dancing because their country is now world champions. From the other room, I could hear Aneesh hum the song “stand up for the champions”

Two days later, the song still refuses to leave me.

"I was built to be the best
Number one and nothing less
Leave me to my destiny
I have waited patiently
I have vision' oh I believe
I know I can count on me
So stand up, for the champions
For the champions stand up…”

We did it, Sachu.I can now rest in peace.

One night at the Mohali

'What is love, if not steadfastly loyal, biased and all-important'
- NN beliefs

India has entered the final, and what perplexes me is what if this is achieved. What does one do after a dream comes true.

For all the tension that shrouded the subcontinent yesterday, the pressure that every cricket lover felt on each side of the border, the skills that the players exhibited, the presence of two Prime Ministers, the Gandhis, and Aamir Khan, the man who stamped the maximum impact on Mohali, in my opinion, was a magnanimous Pathan called Shahid Afridi. Such is the power grace enjoys.

For there were men who played better. Wahab Riaz showed us everything that epitomizes Pakistani fast bowling - clocking over 90 miles, reverse swinging, and looking handsome. In Saeed Ajmal, we saw the spinner to look out for in the future. In Raina, there was a young boy who had not been told this was one of the most hyped matches he would ever play in and therefore he shouldn’t possibly look so cool while batting. In Bhajji, when he picked up Afridi, we saw fervor.

But then Afridi came back and congratulated Team India, willed them to win the final, and apologized to his own country for not delivering them this victory. What Afridi did was not magnificent, really it is but expected of a captain, but it was the manner and conduct with which he did so that made us feel for him. When we expected him to rail his fielders for dropping Sachin not once, not twice or even thrice, he shook his head, smiled and got back to business. When he did take Sachin’s catch, poetic justice if ever there was, he stood in his trademark pose with his hands outstretched and chest protruding out like a proud monarch. Ian Chappell has criticized his celebratory pose, but I find it bloody beautiful.

The game needs showmen Mr Chappell, and yesterday Afridi proved he has more than that to him. Gaurav Banerjee asked me if we could ‘let’ Pakistan win the next world cup. After careful deliberation, we think it is okay. Such is the spell the man cast on us yesterday.

When the game ended, even sleepy Gandhinagar went ballistic as bikes, cars and maybe even nilagais rode around town honking their horns, waving their flags and screaming India Indiaaaa. And those who were walking were nodding back and screaming a similar response, all oblivious that we were all strangers but united by this victory. There were men and women dancing on the road, just like young Raina and Kohli would be in the team bus and hotel. The World Cup tickets and the ‘efficient organization’ surrounding it might make stadium viewing an experience only for the elite, but out on the streets, in Delhi or Mumbai, Gandhinagar or Guwahati, there are thousands of Indians whose lives have just become a shade happier, at least momentarily, because Dhoni and his boys will be playing for themselves and maybe us, at Wankhede on the second of April, 2011.

They say when you truly love something, the whole world conspires for you to achieve it. Pakistan dropping Sachin five times as he approached his 100th hundred probably reinforces this thought. It has been my longest unfulfilled dream to see India win the World Cup, and you to be part of it Sachin. Once you do, we can both hang up our boots together and one day tell our kids how we were part of India’s greatest win at Wankhede, in our own ways.

p.s The author is leaving for Mumbai on the night of the 1st. He does not have a ticket yet, but will not say no if you feel emotional and want to hand over yours to him. Either way, he is going to be part of the procession that celebrates outside the Wankhede in the aftermath of the match. Inviting every single Indian team ‘loyalist’ to be there as well.

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