Aishwarya Rai would be at the Bangalore Turf Club at 14:30, and I was there for our little newspaper to try and get a photo.

 

A few police officers muddled about, picking at petrified gum and paan-spit with the resined tips of their lathis. Midday gamblers watched unespecial midday races, rapt and taciturn nonetheless. The prurient gaggles that frequent pony tracks worldwide were as dejected as anywhere else; and the sadistic reasons for subjecting this lot to a sight of the former Miss World remained a mystery. Only the person who decided it should be so could explain why such a glamorous woman would make an appearance in such an unglamorous place, but I’d never get a chance to ask him.

 

For a starlet accustomed to adoring fans kept at bay by velvet ropes and hulkish, secret-service earpiece sporting security guards with triceps stress-testing the hems of t-shirt sleeves, the frayed yellow cord and rent-a-cops in stained, oversized uniforms could have been the reason for the quick burst from her car into a foyer, where in front of a lift waiting with open doors, a group of white-suited, brown-skinned Mafioso-looking types waited with open arms.

 

I stared over the shoulders of the gamblers, who by now had heard the rumours about the iconess who would soon be gliding gracefully amid the humped shoulders and balding scalps.

 

The cavalcade arrived, and as quickly as a lesser heroine would become unfashionable, she was up and out of the car, through the ogling swarth and into the huddle of linen suits and sunglasses.

 

In the seconds before she emerged, I envisioned my photos of those “sexiest eyes in the world” staring back at me as she passed, the throngs obscured behind her. But of course, but my point-and-shoot just didn’t cut it, and the blurry countenance of my admitted perennial fantasy appears, in the few snaps I clicked off, to look more like Sonia Gandhi than the Bollywood paragon.

 

In the one fruitful image I managed to pluck, a paparazzo’s upswung camera blocks her entire visage. The sharpness of her one visible ear remains a thorn in my side, knowing how crisp she would have appeared without that Nikon strap in the way. My photo assignment was botched.

 

The worst part of it is, before she arrived, when I’d staked out my place where my imagined photographic excellence would take place, I’d spotted a sign above a door, amusing enough that it was found in a race track where pulses ran high, but even more amusing it would be when I caught a photo of this ethereal creature looking straight into my lens from underneath it. It said: “Emergency Heart Resuscitation Room.”

 

But the elevator doors had closed behind her before I even finished rehearsing my Pulitzer acceptance speech. Mental note: When someone of the pedigree of Aishwarya Rai is two feet away and moving quickly, have an SLR camera on hand.