13 July,2024 08:27 AM IST | Mumbai | Team SMD
Sachin and Anjali fell for each other in a chance encounter at the airport in 1990, and dated in secret for a year, recalls author Annabel Mehta. Pics/Annabel Mehta’s Personal Collection
One afternoon in 1991, I was at home in my flat in the family bungalow on Warden Road when the phone rang. âCan I speak to Anjali Mehta?' said a young woman. âShe's not here. Tell me?' I replied. âI'm ringing from such-and-such hotel in Bangalore,' said the voice. âMr Tendulkar wants to talk to her.' When Anjali got back from JJ Hospital that evening, I told her I had been mildly amused that a Mr Tendulkar's secretary had rung, hoping to find her. âOh, Mummy,' groaned Anjali, âit must have been Muffi playing a prank!' Muffi - Muffazal Lakdawala - was a fellow medical student, mad about cricket. I laughed and didn't give it another thought.
Anjali was not telling the exact truth. She and Sachin had been seeing one another for over a year, a secret shared with just a handful of close friends.
But not her parents.
Romance had sparked in September 1990 at the airport in Bombay. Anjali and her best friend, Aparna, also a medical student, had come to fetch me from my annual visit to my elderly mother (still bicycling in her nineties) in England. They were in the viewing gallery at Arrivals when Aparna squealed: âThat's the Indian cricket team coming out, Anjali.' âWho's that?' asked Anjali. She was pointing to an enchanting boy with chubby cheeks and a shock of dark curls coming through from the Heathrow flight before mine. As Anjali looked at him, their eyes met, or so she claims, because the next minute she grabbed Aparna and they ran down the stairs in chase, the fact of my impending arrival forgotten. Sachin was seventeen; Anjali was twenty-one. And Cupid must have been hiding behind a column.
Just weeks before, on August 14, Sachin, already a superstar in India, had scored his maiden Test century at Old Trafford in Manchester, dragging India from defeat. Anand had watched the match in London on my brother Richard's black-and-white television. However, every keen Indian cricket fan would have heard Sachin's name less than a year earlier when, aged sixteen and barely five-foot-six, he played for India against Pakistan in Sialkot. The brilliant Waqar Younis, himself only a year older, and making his Test match debut, had bowled a bouncer that smashed into his nose. Sachin had famously carried on playing with blood streaming down his cute little baby-face. It was a baptism of sorts. From that moment, Sachin was christened Master Blaster.
Needless to say, Anand, a cricket anorak, had known about Sachin even earlier. One afternoon in October 1988, he had been playing in a bridge tournament at the Cricket Club of India in the card room on the pavilion side of the club. A match was going on, and during a break, someone suggested that Anand should come out and watch a young batsman who appeared to be a bit of a star. When Anand got free, the batsman in question, one Sachin Tendulkar, was still in and continuing to stun spectators with his style. The club had had to amend its rules so that a fifteen-year-old could enter the dressing room.
The next time Anand watched Sachin was at his debut innings in the Ranji Trophy tournament at the Wankhede Stadium against Gujarat, where he made a century, becoming the youngest to do so and therefore a household name in Bombay. But I can guarantee that Anjali had never heard of Sachin - or any other cricketer, for that matter - until that moment, two years later at the airport. The day after Sachin's return to Bombay, I read the story in the paper about a gang of giggly girls who had mobbed him on his arrival at the airport and clambered on to the bonnet of his taxi. It never crossed my mind that one of them was my medical-student daughter.
Anjali had had one or two boyfriends, not remotely serious and possibly only there to keep others at a distance. She was tall and pretty and had dozens of admirers. My mother-in-law was particularly keen on a gorgeous Gujarati chap who sent Anjali flowers every single day. We nicknamed him Phoolwallah. The son of a celebrity I dare not name was also buzzing around. I had created for Anjali a lovely room at the top of the house with windows at either end and a view of the mango tree, where she and her friends used to lounge about on mattresses and fat bolsters. We had more space than most people, and a garden, and there were always heaps of young ones coming and going.
As a devoted mother, I think I might be permitted to say that my daughter was quite a catch. From the moment she began studying medicine, I imagined she would fall madly in love with a dishy doctor she met fluttering ebony-black lashes above his surgical mask during a complicated medical procedure. Or maybe an Oxford graduate who had come back to Bombay to work in some Indian pharma company? Or an IT graduate with a good corporate job? I would never in a million years have predicted that she would fall for a cricketer.
How - and why - Anjali kept Sachin a secret from us for so long, I don't know. Perhaps she was waiting until she felt absolutely sure about him. Even as a small girl she was measured, sensible and organised, in pronounced contrast to her little sister Tara, who was a dreamer, scatty and forgetful. Anjali forgets nothing. She used to get home from school, go straight to her room and do her homework. She was always prepared, punctual and private. That is her nature. I suppose I didn't share my private life with my mother, either. I later discovered that when Anjali met Sachin, she wrote to her aunt Helen, my brother Richard's wife, and said she had developed an interest in cricket and asked if she could send her a copy of the Idiot's Guide to Cricket, which was only available in England. Anjali has a doctor's brain. She learns quickly and has a brilliant memory. She read the book in a day and then invited a surprised Sachin to test her. âWhat's cow corner?' he asked, hoping to catch her out. But Anjali knew it was a particular place on the cricket field in the deep on the batsman's leg side. Clean bowled!
Anjali says it was love at first sight that day at the airport. For her, at least. The second she got home, she phoned her friend Muffi (he who was accused of the âprank' phone call) and asked him for Sachin's phone number; Muffi had a cousin who played club cricket in Bombay, so he knew people, and the job was done. Sachin, rarely at home, happened to pick up the phone that day. Anjali introduced herself as the girl from the airport and said she wanted to see him again. Sachin claimed to remember her. âSo, what was the colour of my tee-shirt?' bowled a flirty Anjali. âOrange,' said Sachin. A six for Sachin! The rest is history. I wouldn't be surprised if Anjali has kept the tee-shirt.
Excerpted with permission from My Passage to India by Annabel Mehta and Georgina Brown, Westland Books
