Man of Her Match Read online

  SAKSHAMA PURI DHARIWAL

  MAN OF her MATCH

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Contents

  May 1996

  March 2014

  June 1996

  March 2014

  March 1998

  March 2014

  February 2000

  March 2014

  August 2001

  March 2014

  August 2001

  March 2014

  February 2002

  March 2014

  January 1991

  March 2014

  Two months later . . .

  Acknowledgments

  Follow Penguin

  Copyright

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  MAN OF HER MATCH

  Sakshama Puri Dhariwal is the author of The Wedding Photographer. She was born in Delhi and raised in a cricket-crazy family. She has an MBA in marketing and has worked as a brand manager for e-commerce, media and telecom companies. Sakshama currently lives in San Francisco with her husband and daughter. Man of Her Match is her second novel.

  By the Same Author

  The Wedding Photographer

  A delicious, breezy romantic comedy full of fun, sass, heart and wit

  On a seventeen-hour flight, a chance upgrade to business class lands journalist Risha Kohli next to handsome real estate hotshot Arjun Khanna. What’s more? Risha has been moonlighting as a photographer and her next assignment is Arjun’s sister’s wedding: the most anticipated social event of the year!

  But Arjun doesn’t trust journalists and suspects this smart, sexy and incredibly spunky girl of using their mutual attraction as a ploy to invade his privacy for a newspaper scoop. And Risha, unaware of Arjun’s personal demons, is worried that this dishy tycoon’s unnerving behaviour will jeopardize her biggest professional gig so far.

  What follows is a roller coaster of snarky quips, sizzling chemistry and simmering drama amidst a Big Fat Punjabi Wedding.

  Praise for The Wedding Photographer

  AN AMAZON INDIA MEMORABLE BOOK OF 2016

  ‘Brings together all the ingredients that make for a heady, romantic story’

  The Hindu

  ‘Keeps the reader enraptured till the end’

  HT City, New Delhi

  ‘With a breezy style reminiscent of Anuja Chauhan, the novel is exactly the kind of humorous read one needs after a rigorous day at work’

  Telegraph

  ‘A pacy work of fiction . . . sure to keep the reader glued’

  Tribune

  ‘Take a long glass of fresh lime soda and put your feet up, maybe lie down in a hammock and sip this book, page by page’

  Asian Age

  ‘For readers who love a frothy romantic comedy, this is the perfect book’

  Deccan Chronicle

  ‘If you have grown up reading Mills and Boon or Nora Roberts . . . you are surely going to love [this] novel’

  HT City, Kolkata

  ‘[A] very good rom-com’

  New Indian Express

  ‘This refreshing novel . . . is a treat’

  Wedding Vows

  ‘Has all the elements of a breezy rom-com’

  Verve

  For Arpit, the man of my match

  May 1996

  Eight-year-old Nidhi Marwah rushed to the boundary wall she shared with Mrs Walia next door, and pressed her chin to the top brick, craning her neck for a better view. A Maruti van had just pulled into Mrs Walia’s driveway, and Nidhi was bursting with curiosity to know what, or rather whom, it had brought with it.

  She turned to her trio of trusted comrades and whispered, ‘I can’t see anything! Tell me what’s happening.’

  Mahendra Rao, the family’s chauffeur of fifteen years, lowered his head to hers, eyes fixated on the scene unfolding in front of him. ‘A man has stepped out of the front seat. He looks like the driver. He is unloading suitcases from the dicky.’

  ‘There is a child in the back seat, Nidhi Baby,’ narrated Mangal Singh, the pot-bellied cook. ‘I think she is a girl your age.’

  ‘Tum andhi ho gayi hai, Mangal,’ the family’s Nepalese security guard, Bhimsen Thapa, scoffed, mixing up the gender pronouns, as he often did while speaking Hindi. ‘She is not a girl, she is a boy!’

  ‘Maybe she is a girl with short hair, Nepali,’ Mangal Singh countered. ‘Like Nidhi Baby.’

  A shiver of excitement caused Nidhi to drop the cricket bat she was holding. ‘I’m finally going to have a friend!’

  Rao gave her a hurt look, twirling his handlebar moustache in affront. ‘We are your friends.’

  ‘Ummm, I meant a friend my age,’ Nidhi clarified.

  ‘Odie is your age,’ Bhimsen reminded her.

  ‘Odie is a dog,’ Nidhi said, rolling her eyes.

  As fond as Nidhi was of the Trio, they could be a real pain sometimes. Last week, Nidhi had dragged Mangal Singh out of the kitchen to play basketball at the newly installed hoop in the driveway, but Mangal just could not wrap his head around the rules. He ran without dribbling the ball and kept hurling it at the hoop like in a shot-put contest. Then, three days ago, Nidhi had gathered the Trio to play football with her, but they kept kicking the ball outside the house and then fighting over who would go and retrieve it.

  So, naturally, Nidhi’s excitement was justified.

  ‘Maybe she will go to the same school as me!’ Nidhi burst out, her face flushed with exhilaration.

  The Trio exchanged a look of deep concern for their de facto ward, the only child of workaholic lawyer Balraj Marwah. Balraj seldom saw Nidhi awake, and when he did, it was mostly to admonish her about her latest mischief, or to issue more edicts in her already over-disciplined life. And even though Nidhi was friendly and extroverted, her tomboyish personality made her an outsider for both genders—the girls thought she was too much like a boy and the boys thought she wasn’t boy enough. Hence Nidhi’s tendency to pin her hopes on every new arrival in her school, or her neighbourhood. She stalked and poked and pestered and pleaded with every new kid, till they either caved in or asked to be left alone—more often than not, unfortunately, the latter.

  Nidhi glanced at the worry-stricken faces of the Trio in confusion. ‘What?’

  ‘Uh, maybe she is just here for the summer holidays, Nidhi Baby,’ Mangal said, in a belated attempt to manage her expectations.

  ‘Tell me about her! What does she look like?’ Nidhi asked, her green eyes alight with interest.

  ‘She is stepping out of the car,’ Rao whispered, then narrowed his eyes in confusion. ‘But she is not a she.’ He turned to Mangal in disgust, confirming his suspicions about Mangal’s deteriorating vision. ‘She is a he.’

  ‘Ha! Boli thi na.’ Bhimsen smirked, thrilled about this minor victory over his Indian counterparts.

  Nidhi jumped up and down in her spot in an attempt to catch a glimpse of her new neighbour.

  The young boy was as tall as Nidhi, with a longish mop of untidy brown hair very similar to hers. Dressed in jeans and a plaid shirt, he walked towards the main door of Mrs Walia’s house, shoulders drooped and eyes focused on the ground.

  Nidhi panicked. What if he disappeared into the house before she had a chance to introduce herself?

  ‘Hi!’ she shouted. ‘I’m Nidhi.’

  The boy turned for a fleeting second before resuming his dispassionate walk into the house.

  Nidhi shot Bhimsen a forlorn look and the guard gave her a reassuring smile. ‘Maruti ki driver Nepali hai, Nidhi Baby. I will get all information from him!’

  Nidhi watched a variety of emotions—surprise, sorrow and sympathy—flicker over Bhimsen’s wrinkled face as he exchanged a few quick words with the Nepalese driver. When he returned, she jabbed her elbow in
to Bhimsen’s ribs and looked at him expectantly. ‘What did he say?’

  ‘The boy’s name is Vikram, and Mrs Walia is his grandmother. He used to live in Mumbai with his parents, but they died in a car accident a few days ago. Driver ko itna hi pata hai.’

  Nidhi’s face fell. ‘That’s really sad.’ Then she thought of something. ‘But if he’s Walia Aunty’s grandson, why hasn’t he ever visited before?’

  ‘Pata nahi,’ Bhimsen replied. ‘The driver didn’t say.’

  ‘It’s because . . .’ Rao’s voice trailed off.

  ‘Because?’ Nidhi prodded.

  Because Vikram’s father, a Punjabi, had married a Rajput woman without Mrs Walia’s consent, resulting in a decade-long feud between mother and son.

  ‘Because Mrs Walia had a falling-out with her son before Vikram was born,’ Rao explained.

  ‘How do you know?’ Mangal asked pointedly.

  The same way he got most of his information—by eavesdropping on his employer’s conversations in the car.

  ‘I heard it somewhere,’ Rao evaded.

  ‘It doesn’t matter, because Vikram and I are going to be best friends!’ Nidhi said confidently. ‘I just know it, Rao Uncle.’

  Rao gave her an affectionate smile. ‘And how do you know that, Nidhi Baby?’

  ‘Because among all his other luggage, I’m pretty sure I saw a cricket kitbag!’

  March 2014

  Vikram Walia grabbed his kitbag from the conveyor belt at Terminal 3 of the New Delhi airport and slung it over his shoulder, before following his manager towards the exit. He had a mild headache from the sugar-coated rebuke he had received during the two-hour flight from Mumbai to Delhi, and he was in no mood for a prolonged lecture.

  ‘I have pulled major strings-vings to take Aamir Khan off this campaign,’ his manager-cum-agent, Monty Bhalla, had told him repeatedly. ‘This is best opportunity to repair damage you have . . . ummm, damage that has been done to your image.’

  ‘The reason Aamir Khan refused to do the campaign,’ Vikram corrected Monty, ‘is because he wants to focus on the next season of Satyamev Jayate. One of the advantages of being kicked off the team is that I have plenty of time to read newspapers.’

  Monty had grinned sheepishly before rattling off the details of the corporate social responsibility campaign he was gunning for Vikram to endorse. Vikram mentally switched off, nodding along absently, as he often did when his flamboyant manager inundated him with superfluous details of potential brand endorsements. Between the jingling of Monty’s gold bracelet as he gesticulated madly and the gleaming of his varicoloured rings, Vikram had caught the following gist: if he agreed to sign with the brand in question, he would end up spending a couple of weeks on a campaign without receiving a single penny. It seemed like a big waste of time to Vikram, but given his ‘conduct’ over the last few weeks, he had no leverage to negotiate, not even with his own manager.

  As they neared the airport exit, Vikram automatically slipped on a cap and sunglasses, preparing himself for the inevitable onslaught of the paparazzi.

  ‘Vikram, how are you coping with the five-match ban?’

  ‘Are you dating Natasha Sahay?’

  ‘Is Shaan Kapoor pressing charges?’

  ‘Is umpire Mark McCoy pressing charges?’

  ‘How long are you in Delhi?’

  ‘Do you think the number thirteen is unlucky for you?’

  ‘Will the ban be extended?’

  ‘Will you be allowed to play the South Africa series?’

  Monty stepped in front of Vikram with practised ease and held up his pudgy, metal-adorned hands to block the non-stop camera flashes and fiery questions. ‘No cum-ment, no cum-ment.’ He winked at a couple of journalists who were friends and mouthed, ‘I’ll call you later,’ before ushering Vikram into the back seat of a black Mercedes Benz.

  As soon as the car started moving, Vikram held up a hand, pre-emptively cutting off whatever his manager was about to say. ‘Not now, Monty.’

  Monty nodded agreeably, realizing that he had pushed his client far enough for one day. He took out a small bottle of medication from his pocket and swallowed a couple of pills, silently dwelling on the events of the past seven days. At the beginning of the week, as a show of indignation over an LBW decision in a match against Sri Lanka, Vikram had roughly shouldered past an umpire on his way back to the pavilion. As per the International Cricket Council’s code of conduct for players, technically, this would have constituted a level 2 offence—‘showing serious dissent at an umpire’s decision’—and resulted in Vikram having to forgo his match fee. However, due to a series of prior incidents, and Vikram’s general disregard for rules, the ICC categorized the misdemeanour as a level 3 offence—‘intimidation of an umpire’—resulting in the much harsher five-match ban, effectively causing Vikram to sit out the rest of the series.

  And if that wasn’t bad enough, three days ago, Vikram had engaged in an unprovoked brawl with Bollywood actor Shaan Kapoor, punching him square on the jaw at a crowded nightclub in Mumbai. A fan-posted video of the incident had gone viral, causing the Board of Control for Cricket in India to set up a disciplinary hearing at the end of the month. If the hearing didn’t go in his favour, Vikram’s ban could be extended further for ‘conduct unbecoming of an Indian cricketer’.

  So whether Vikram agreed to it or not, Aamir Khan pulling out of News Today’s EducateIndia programme was a blessing for Monty’s belligerent client. While the deal wouldn’t pay Vikram anything in cash, it was a masterstroke as far as mending his tarnished image was concerned. The programme would help position Vikram as a proponent of education for underprivileged children and, since it was an internal brand campaign, the newspaper would ensure large-format ads on a daily basis—each carrying Vikram’s smiling face. Recently, Vikram’s bad-boy image had slumped to such depths that a news article had called him ‘a bad influence on Virat Kohli’. So this campaign was the perfect opportunity to present Vikram in a positive light. All he needed to do was charm News Today’s marketing team into believing he was the right man for the job.

  ‘Absolutely not!’ Nidhi said in disbelief.

  ‘Why not?’ Dibakar Roy, her boss and marketing head of News Today, asked, furrowing his brows in surprise.

  ‘Dibakar, we’d be better off having no brand ambassador than this brand ambassador,’ she said, genuinely horrified.

  Dibakar looked unperturbed and she mentally mouthed his next words: ‘Your idealism is your most endearing quality, Nidhi.’

  ‘Thanks, Dibakar,’ she said, trying not to let the sarcasm in her head seep into her voice. ‘But I’m just being realistic.’ She walked around his desk and handed him that day’s Delhi Today, the entertainment and lifestyle supplement of News Today. ‘Have you seen this?’

  Without looking at the newspaper, Dibakar nodded. ‘Of course. So what?’

  ‘So what? Allow me to read out some of the tweets from the trending hashtag “Walia Ki Gaaliyan”.’

  Famous for his unflappable patience, Dibakar listened to Nidhi read out excerpts from the article he had already skimmed through that morning.

  ‘“The only thing more colourful than #WaliaKiGaaliyan is a rainbow. On Govinda’s shirt. In a David Dhawan film.”’

  When Dibakar gave no reaction, Nidhi continued, ‘“Why will Vikram Walia never be invited to Arnab Goswami’s show? Because he’s the only person who can outshout Arnab. #WaliaKiGaaliyan”.’

  She glanced up at Dibakar, but he was watching her with a patronizing smile, like a parent waiting for a child to deliver the punchline of their joke.

  ‘Oh, this one’s my favourite. “What was Vikram Walia’s first word? The F-word. #WaliaKiGaaliyan”.’

  Dibakar cracked a smile at that but said nothing.

  ‘This is the guy you think should be the face of EducateIn? A guy who barely cleared his board exams?’

  ‘Because he was too occupied winning the Under-19 World Cup,’ Dibakar pointed out calmly, smo
othing his French beard with his index finger and thumb.

  ‘He’s a loose cannon!’ Nidhi argued ardently, gesturing to the newspaper. ‘How can you possibly expect him to represent such a serious cause? We need someone who can be a good role model for the kids. We’re trying to steer them to a life of education and learning, not abusive language and violence!’

  Dibakar nodded patiently and reached for the newspaper, pretending to read the article headlined ‘Walia Packs a Punch’. The front page of Delhi Today carried an elaborate photo essay of Walia’s many altercations—with opposing players, umpires, the crowd, even journalists. And then there was a screen grab of the famous YouTube video of Walia punching an A-grade movie star.

  In theory, Dibakar agreed with Nidhi. Walia was a loose cannon and couldn’t be relied upon for championing such an important cause. But practically speaking, Aamir Khan’s last-minute exit from the project had wreaked havoc on the campaign’s timeline. Not only would they have to defer the launch by two weeks, they would even have to risk rolling out a series of ads pushing a cause that was highly pertinent yet too common to garner the interest it deserved without celebrity backing.

  ‘As usual, you have a valid point,’ Dibakar began, and Nidhi instinctively knew his polite compliment was intended to soften the blow of his oncoming refusal. ‘But since we have so much riding on this campaign from a brand image perspective, I think going with one of the most popular cricketers in the country might be the best recourse. Sure, it is a risk, but . . .’

  ‘Larger the risk, greater the reward,’ Nidhi finished in a glib tone.

  ‘Exactly!’ Dibakar beamed approvingly.

  Nidhi was undeterred. ‘Vikram Walia is an obnoxious, self-centred, spoiled Casanova. Do you remember the incident with the Brazilian models?’ she charged on, making air quotes around the word ‘models’.

  ‘Who knows how much truth there was in that?’ Dibakar shrugged.