Nawab Pataudi

I am woken up by a sms from my father at 1 AM in the morning, the day Pataudi died.

Sms reads -
"Just saw news of Pataudi's death. This looked like a personal bereavement to me since Pataudi and Sobers were the two international cricketers whom I saw from closest range in my life, in the historical test at Eden gardens where second day's play was washed away due huge crowd, which could not get full accommodation.

Both of them were in a black car. As the car approached the gate, I ran fast out line, reached by chance the back side window, tried my best to put my head inside and saw them clearly laughing and talking.
One was black and the other was white, but both were extremely handsome and looked so smart.
Pataudi's death has made me so sad"

My father never fails to surprise me with his emotional connect to people outside the realm of his close relatives.
And being his daughter, am such a fry cry from that. I have never iconised anyone in my life, never held anyone larger than life and attached my happiness or sadness with them.

Its this child like thing in him that makes me love him , even though he drives me mad mostly. I could almost imagine him doing all that, what he wrote in the sms

A bright eyed teenager, he must have been back then

This sms dint make the cricket-lover in me miss anything, but reminded me of our huge bunglaw(back from Britisher's days), back in my home town. The huge terrace, where we all used to accumulate on a pretty winter day. Elders having tea, kids frolicking around, and the small rickety transistor blaring with live cricket commentary and my father and his brothers hooked on to it.

And being able to conjure up that image right now, seems like a privilege to me

Now I am dreading demise of next (rather first on his list) icon in his life, whom he idolized to the extent of fights with my mother. Whose hairstyle he copied in his hay days. And that icon is film actor Dilip Kumar.
Whose pictures and newspaper cuttings of all his achievement are sprawled across an almirah in his bedroom, as if he is our own.