He is sitting a yard across from me and when the waiter comes to ask him what he would like, I see a bemused look in his rheumy eyes. He is not a frequent flyer and will have to pay for his drink. With not a trace of self consciousness, he asks for the card because he fears the drinks here are expensive. He goes up and down the list agonizing over the various drinks and their exorbitant prices. After much humming and hawing he asks for a small rum with a lot of soda to make it last longer. A few minutes later he says he should not have ordered a drink, and then almost to himself says that we keep making mistakes in life. There was - or am I imaging it – a fleeting shadow of great sadness on that time ravaged face. It still was a very handsome visage.

But that somber moment was soon gone because I narrated a story that quite made his day. This came – as do most of my cricket stories - from my friend Raghunath who played cricket almost good enough to make the Ranji squad. I remember every word of this story though it was narrated a good 24 years back. Fielding for Indian Gymkhana, 1969, Raghu had the privilege of watching Salim Durani at his imperious best. The captain set a field of deep third man, deep point, deep cover point, deep cover….every fielder just yards from the other and yet Durani kept uncorking a series of cuts, square drives and cover drives that left them standing. Word spread that “Durani mood mein hai” and within 30 minutes more than a thousand enthusiasts had come all agog to watch the genius at work! And then I had my first glimpse of this man’s generous nature. He was curious about Raghu, when did he play, was he a left hander too, where is he nowadays…..nothing about his own batting but all curious about the person who had such a nice story on him!

Over the next 45 minutes we covered a variety of topics and cricketers. And each time one saw Durani, generous with praise, large hearted, never a sour word about any player. Sample these:

“Venkat…bahut intelligent cricketer…Engineer tha (and you could see in that hushed tone great respect for that educational qualification)”. “Prasanna…much greater than his contemporaries, I could wait the whole day just to see him beat the batsman with his floater”. “Gavaskar….the finest among all he hated getting out even after making 150.” “Sachin….God made him and said, tu jaa cricket khel…that is genius.” And on a it went, a good word for everyone.

I then ask him to tell me about his own game. And I realize that he has greater pride in his left arm spin than in his batting. It was the only time during the entire conversation that we saw Durani assertive. I could spin the ball anywhere; I used a lot of change of pace; I used to release the ball in a variety of ways; my arm ball would hustle off the pitch….do you know that on the first day of a test match in 1964 on the dead Madras Corporation wicket, I reduced Australia from 99 for no loss to 211 all out? Two years earlier I had Dexter’s England in a whole lot of trouble with my bowling…9 wickets here, 6 wickets there….Durani loved recounting to us his bowling exploits. But he was strangely very modest about his batting. I almost think that even to this day Durani is torn inside by the realization that he did not use his enormous batting skills very sensibly.

I then ask him, how did our tail enders in those days play the fearsome fast bowlers without a helmet and without getting hit. These days even the best batsman keep getting hit on the helmet. Durani’s explanation is all arms and gestures. Those days even the fastest bowlers used swing more than bounce. These days actions are also more suspect (Aha! At last one disparaging word from the gentle genius) but don’t think people did not get hurt. I finished with cricket in 1974 after being felled by a bouncer in a Ranji match. They had to operate on me. And he parts his black hair (dyed or natural?) to show me where the surgeon had to do his stuff.

Our flight has been called. His rum is still half full and he has managed to spend an hour in the company of a fan who cherishes his exploits of 40 years ago. Should we offer to pay for the drink? No we don’t think Durani would like that. As we are getting up in walks Saba Karim, the former India keeper and they greet each other, Salim in fact getting up to clasp a fellow cricketer’s hands. I think Salim has some more good company till his flight is called.