The Only---Right Arm Fast

This is something that happened about a year back. And I can claim royalty from Vodafone as they have made an advertisement out of that wow moment (the lift add in which the girl sees a movie star besides her)

Well in our case, I was with my team mates Kapil, Payal and Rahul and gone to Hilton to meet the newly set up MS team. It was a good meeting and we were very excited after meeting such senior people who had loads of investment banking experience. In our excitement we took the wrong lift and instead of going down we went up for a couple of floors. And then the DOOR opened...

First two huge bodyguards marched inside. We were curious to see who was behind them. Then after a split second we saw a familiar face come inside. All of us looked at him and felt we had seen him somewhere and after a split second realised who he was......It was yes the only tear away fast bowler of our time ( I am sure this will invite criticism/ debate..but will ensure some traffic and comments on my blog which are most welcome.

Anyways enough of marketing, coming back to the lift in which there are 4 of us,two giant bodyguard and Rawalpindi express. When the lift began its downward journey me and rahul had exchanged glances to confirm that it was indeed the man himself. It was a divine moment for us probably like when Chaitanya Mahaprabhu or Tulsidas had seen god himself ( I am sure again this might upset some BJP supporters as I am calling a Pakistani fast bowler as God...OK then put your comments)..

For the 1st 5 seconds we were smitten we could not utter a word. I think Shoaib sensed the silence or maybe he was at his charming best or maybe he got distracted by Payal...:). He broke the ice and asked us "aap log kahaan se hain". After telling him that we are from Bombay only (No i didnt give him gyaan about Shimla and the fact that I had come to bombay for my rozi roti). Again there was silence as the lift was going further down. There was this tension building up inside me as I wanted to say something to him. Suddenly out of the blue I said to him. Congratulations ( it was for the fact that he had got a huge sum of money to join the Calcutta team for IPL). He acknowledged that and said "shukriya". He said he was happy to join Shahrukh's team and then he said quite unassumingly.."Bombay kyaa kar raha thaa..App logo ne kya team banayee hai.. All of us had a big laugh on that.

While we were warming up and getting ready to hurl some more questions (I am sure we could have carried on for hours) the lift came to a halt. We knew it was time to say bye bye. Shoaib walked into the lobby of the hotel and disappeared slowly into the crowd of elite businessman, travellers, corporate honchos etc etc...And we kept looking at each other. The purpose for which we had gone there was for the time being kept in the background.

It was a time to sit back and savour the moment...