When Cheteshwar Pujara's wife Puja bats for the cricketer

Though my fiance and I were in our courtship phase I had not really had any meaningful glimpse of his professional career mainly because he didnrsquot talk about it too much and I did not like to probeWhen I look back I marvel at the irony of it all there was a copious amount of information available online about his cricketing career and yet I never bothered to browse indepth on the net to find out about it Somehow at the time I had felt that it would be more natural to let that side of him unfold through his eyes instead of absorbing it impersonally through thirdperson narrativesPuja recalls being taken aback when her face was splashed across newspapers mdash including this November 16 2012 sports page from midday mdash after Cheteshwar scored 206 against EnglandWe settled down to watch the opening session Gautam Gambhir and Virendra Sehwag opened the match The former got out at 45 and Cheteshwar walked onto the creasemdashand that is when I had my second taste of media attention It came as quite a shock Our faces had been splashed in the newspapers extensively enough barely a week earlier but the blissful anonymity that had ensued till this point had lulled me to believe that I was not interested enough to merit any further press coverage Subsequent events soon put paid to this false piece of optimismSehwag from the little I understood of the game played a scintillating innings scoring 117 runs with a strike rate of 100 per cent A loud cheer reverberated around the stadium when he was bowled by Graeme Swann lsquoWhy are they roaring when the poor guy has got outmdashthat too after scoring a centuryrsquo I wonderedI did not know then that the stadium had come alive because Sachin Tendulkar the demigod of the cricketing world was trotting in to replace Sehwag at the crease He had debuted for India on the same date 23 years ago as a 16yearold The crowd was ecstatic Unfortunately he got out at 13Cheteshwar stood his ground at the other end and a couple of times when he hit a boundary the cameras focused on me Utterly selfconscious I sported a constant smile on my facemdashgood shot bad shot it did not mattermdashnot that I knew much of what was happening in the game in any case My facial muscles started aching Valiantly I persevered on wondering if I would ever smile againCheteshwar is joined on the field by Puja and their daughter Aditi as he wins his Hundredth Test cap in 2023This particular bout of media intrusion was just the harbinger of a string of seemingly neverending woes All of a sudden I was inundated with a host of random messages Matters did not improve Soon people started approaching me a patently peculiar experience that increased my sense of uneaseI stared at the steadily burgeoning crowd with a spurious smile still pasted steadfastly on my face wishing with all my might that I could turn into a latterday Sita and invoke the earth to part and swallow me whole because quintessentially I was a very private person I had never dealt with people in such large numbers before If there had been an invisibility cloak handy I would have grabbed itAt the close of day Cheteshwar was batting at 98 and Yuvraj Singh at 24 The Pujara family was naturally disinclined to abandon its illustrious scion at such a critical stage of his innings and decided to stay back at Ahmedabad for the nightThe decision was worth it Cheteshwar taught to put a premium on his bat carried it through and remained notout at 206 when India declared the innings after amassing 521 runs with only eight wickets down Even I a cricketnovice understood the significance of the achievementCheteshwar was on a high when I met him after the dayrsquos play Caught up with the general sense of elation I said ldquoYou have no idea how happy everyone ismdashand wersquore all thrilled to bits that you got your double hundredmdashitrsquos truly amazingmdashrdquo He cut me short ldquoThis is truly amazingmdashwhat we have is truly amazingmdashthis feelsmdashrdquo he paused groping for the right wordPicGetty ImagesldquoThis feels completerdquo I said finishing the sentence for him His eyes twinkled in response I understood what he left unsaid The fact that I had finished his sentence had just served to underline his point this was complete we were complete we completed each other It was a magical moment and his words never left meCheteshwar and I were having our customary nightly chat over the phone He mentioned in passing that he was expecting to meet some acquaintances shortly Soon afterwards he took off and I thought no more of itTwenty minutes later he called me up shaken His voice kept cracking because he was on the elevator and the signal was poor I could not make out what he was trying to say but it was clear that he was bursting to share some news with meldquoI canrsquot hear you properlyrdquo I complainedldquoJust hold on Irsquom about to reach my room I need to tell you somethingrdquo he muttered his voice suddenly loud and clearI heard him unlocking the door of his room and then latching it a few seconds later By now I was brimming with curiosityHe came back on the line ldquoYou remember I was telling you about these people I was going to meetrdquoldquoYesrdquo I admitted cautiouslyCheteshwarrsquos story the way he told it bore close resemblance to a Grimmrsquos fairy tale with a burlesque ending in which he appeared to have starred as a somewhat naiumlve male version of Little Red Riding Hood The big bad wolf in this instance turned out to be a young thirteen maybe fourteen year old girlIn plain English he met this family of four to five people who were friends of some friends They asked for a photograph with him He obliged They wanted an autograph He duly signed the bat produced by their son who it appears was younger than his more intrepid sister Just before they left their young teenage daughter ventured to give him a quick hug and a chaste peck on the cheek to wish him good luck for his upcoming test match in Bombay with her parents looking on benignlyHe ended his tale a tad disjointedly trying to soothe what he imagined would be my highly ruffled feathers by pointing out somewhat defensively ldquoI couldnrsquot do anything It happened so quicklyrdquoI burst out laughingMy amusement went unregistered and after a slight pause avowedly determined to unburden himself he continued in a stiff and embarrassed voice lsquoI thought I should tell yoursquoStill in whoops I chortled loudly and said lsquoCheteshwar shersquos only thirteen Why are you even telling me about it In fact why are you even thinking about itrsquoHe grunted His sense of humour had clearly gone abeggingExcerpted with permission from The Diary of a Cricketerrsquos Wife by Puja Pujara with Namita Kala HarperCollins Publishers IndiaatOptionskeyd0ddb8ef8f1a62a8cdd22fac27fc5ea7formatiframeheight90width728params