"Ballu..." Kapil walked into Ballu's room, smiling, holding a new pair of shoes.

Ballu considered getting up and going to tell Kaps that it was he himself who had suggested Kabir Khan to include the shoe part. He'd done it because he remembered Kapsie's tiny caring gestures with fondness and love, but he'd go and tell him 'I did it to make you look good in the film.'

The next scene dried up his desire to go and boast.

Seeing someone drying their long hair in Ballu's room, a horrified Kapil hastily put down the shoes on the bed and fled.

The scene switched to Jimmy's incredulous face.

"Ladki? Ballu de kamre?"

"Ha. Naha dho ke nikli thi shayad, baal gila tha..." said Kapil.

"Aur Ballu?" asked Maddi.

"Naha raha hoga," speculated Kapil.

"How jobless were you guys?" asked Ballu to Dilip and Roger, who were on either side of him.

"The joke's on you, sardar," said Dilip. "Why did you have waist length hair?"

"Dono saathme kyu nahi naha rahe?" asked Shastri, frowning, and stood up. "Mai dekhke aata hu."

"Arey ruko miya," said Kiri, pulling him down again. "Tum jaake pith me sabun malte kya?"

The hall exploded and almost missed Roger's subsequent defensive dialogue.

"No, it can't be Ballu."

"Ha yaar, Ballu nahi ho sakta...uski toh abhi sagai huyi hai Simran se..." said Jimmy.

"Yaar ek ladki thi usdin nets pe...shayad wo..." Dilip began in an investigatory tone.

As the girl turned out to be a flummoxed reel Ballu, the hall exploded again.

Real-life Balwinder, having coached all the actors in cricket throughout the shooting, had been privy to all the movie scenes, or so he'd thought till Ammy had said one day, "We have a surprise for you in the movie, Ballu sir."

"You do?"

"Yes. Something to do with our cultural background."

This, Ballu supposed, was his surprise.

Unsurprisingly Ammy leaned forward and asked, "Did you like it, sir?"

"No," said Ballu pointedly.

Ammy snorted with laughter and leaned back again. Saqib observed him, feeling horrified and a little sick at how Ammy should've been heartbroken at this point and was still laughing like nothing was the matter.

If Jimmy sir said he didn't like some bit of reel Jimmy Amarnath in the movie—Saqib felt his hands growing cold at the very thought.

"Why are you fidgeting so much?" Hardy asked impatiently as Saqib accidentally knocked his elbow into his side.

"This is too stressful," complained Saqib in a whisper.

"Which part?" asked Ranveer from his other side, honestly curious.

"Whether..." said Saqib in a softer whisper. "...they..." He indicated at the row in front of them. "...will like it or not..."

"Surely you know we did a good job," said Ranveer, incredulously.

"No, he doesn't," said Hardy. "Drop it," he advised Ranveer.

"Popcorn?" asked Jatin.

Saqib closed his eyes and opened them heavenwards.

****************

"Kapil, in the run-up to the World Cup, your team has lost three practice matches, won even against just a minor county..." David Frith was saying.

"You talk..." interrupted Kapil with a polite smile, and drew back from the mic. "You talk like fast bowler. Can you talk slow, like spin bowler? My hand little tight in English."

"He's nailed your accent, Kaps," said Madan, and turned back to repeat the same to Ranveer, who grinned back.

"What do you think—" repeated Frith, slowly. "—are your team's chances—in the Cup?"

"We here...to win," said Kapil.

"To win the World Cup?" asked Frith.

Kapil smiled like he'd been asked something weird.

"What else we here for?"

"There he goes," said Cheeka. "Crazy, mad captain."

"Don't call him crazy. Turned out he wasn't the crazy one," said Roger, jumping to Kapil's defence. "We were the crazy ones to go to a World Cup with hangdog mentalities."

"Kaps, guess what hangdog means?" asked Cheeka immediately.

"Shut up, you bugger," said Roger and concentrated on the screen where his reel version was introducing the West Indies' terrifying pace quartet with respect and awe, and was now beginning on Joel Garner.

Cheeka winked at Kapil.

"And there's the big bird...Joel Garner..." said Roger.

"Chhay foot aat inch toh height hi hai iski," said Yash ominously. "Hath seedha teen foot upar jata. Upar se do foot uchhal kar ball marta hai. Total barah foot height se ball aati hai aapki taraf, der sau kilometre prati hour ke speed se. Bach lo bhai..."

"Ey, shut up da!" said Cheeka, face screwed up.

The typical Srikkanth accent made everyone who'd followed or known the team back then in 1983 smile.

"Cricket dekhne aye hai, ya horror film? Sabko dara raha kyu?"

Cheeka turned back to give Jiiva's hand an exuberant shake. The latter, having spent so much time with Cheeka sir, thought he ought to have gotten used to all this by now, but as Kapil paaji said, "You never get used to Kris Srikkanth. He never try to control him. You just let him be."

***************

"Tum loga, 'Your Majesty' bolke, hallu se...sirf ungliya pakadna, nazakat se," commanded Man bhai in the bus to the Buckingham Palace. "Jhat bolke pura hath na ko pakdo. Samjhe?"

"Lo," said Yash. "Ab nazakat kaha se laye?"

"Dhundo. Andar kahi toh bhi chhupi hogi," said Man bhai with a sarcastic smile. "Look for it."

"Oh Man bhai, yaha jaan phansi huyi hai aur aapko mazak sujh raha hai..."

This was so exactly they could imagine their Yash saying, in the exact same tone that the first row didn't quite laugh along with the rest of the audience. Jimmy realized that Jatin deserved a hug after the movie, too, and the one he deserved it from would not be there to do it.

"Long live the queen!" said Kirti.

"Come on, you guys, it's a tradition," said Roger. "The queen will wish you luck."

Cheeka fell on Roger, banging him on the back.

"Ye bola tha angrez," said Ballu, voice trembling with laughter. "Roger, baat sun...jab tu queen se milega na toh use ye zaroor batana ki tera grandfather Scotland se tha. Wo bohot khush hogi."

"Shut up, you bugger," said Roger.

"You burger!" retaliated Ballu.

As everyone laughed, this time Roger was prepared, but still could not do anything to protect himself as Cheeka's slap landed on his shoulder.

Honestly, he didn't even try anymore. He'd stopped trying within the first three days of having been paired with an absolute nutcase as roommate.

"Cheeke...tu zara dhyaan se...udhar queen ko aankh mat maar dena," said Yash. "Ye log uthake seedha jail me daal dete hai..."

"Eh," said Cheeka in disgust. "Shut up da."

"Kya shut up? Seriously bol raha hu..."

For the first time during the course of the movie, the beam slid off Kris Srikkanth's face, because he missed Yash so bad, no matter how much he'd been trying to ignore it for the past six months.

He missed fighting every moment of the day with Yash, but he also missed the rare moments where Yash behaved like an elder brother—trying to copy Jimmy pa, sure, but he did quite a good job—and of course he missed teasing Yash about his eating habits, his obsessive phases—with almonds, with Kranti, with—

Kapil, as if he'd somehow sensed his thoughts, gave him a fist bump. Cheeka tried to morph his expression back into his permanent grin.

"Arey arey arey, mai queen ke vaste me yaha wig bhi pehna hu na," announced Kiri, walking up the aisle.

"Looking smart, Kiri," said Sunny.

"Wish you'd do that more in real life, too," Sunny leaned over Dilip to tell Kiri.

"Please," said Kiri complacently. "You guys love my bald head."

"Does make a nice drum," agreed Dilip.

"Mohinder Amarnath...vice-captain...he is..." Kapil said while introducing his team to the queen.

"Vice-captain who doesn't even acknowledge the fact," said Kapil.

"What, now?" asked Jimmy.

"Wait."

"Sunil Gavaskar...he not need any introduction."

"I've seen you play before," said the queen graciously.

"Your Majesty, an honour," said Sunny.

Cheeka appeared to be swallowing his nerves as Kapil and the queen came closer to him in the queue.

"Wicket-keeper Syed Kirmani..."

"Your Majesty," said Kiri, bowing low.

He'd said it so politely that everyone snorted.

"Srikkanth...opening batsman," said Kapil. "He got no meaning of defence."

Cheeka, looking extremely conscious, shook the queen's hand. "Your Majesty."

"Wink, wink, wink..." chanted Kirti in a whisper. Maddi shoved him.

Cheeka's eye twitched into a wink.

Amidst the laughter of his teammates, both on-screen and off-screen-

Kapil hastily moved forward. "Madan Lal...all-rounder..."

"Who made this story public?" asked Cheeka.

"Me," said Kapil. Proudly.

Cheeka hit his shoulder so hard that he groaned.

"Jim pa, look-"

"Cheeka, don't hit Kaps. Sit quietly."

"Whatever you say, Jim pa," said Cheeka angelically.

Now Kaps was tempted to hit him back, but he refrained.

Now the scene showed the teams scattered around in Lord's before the team photographs.

"Hello sir. Myself Srikkanth. I'm from the Indian cricket team, sir," Cheeka said, shaking Viv Richard's hand reverently. "Holding, sir, hello sir, how're you sir. Sir, sir, sir—Clive sir—nice to meet you, sir."

Kapil and Roger were both in hysterics by that point.

"Stop laughing," Cheeka told them both.

Neither did.

"Sir," Cheeka turned back to Richards, his idol. "Big fan, sir."

"Best of luck," said Richards.

"Thank you sir. Thank you sir. Thank you sir."

"Did anyone count how many times Cheeka said sir in that dialogue?" asked Kapil.

"No, but I know how many times he actually said it on that day," offered Kirti.

"No, you don't," said Madan.

"I do—I do—"

"Kirti," said Jimmy.

That shut Kirti up, much to Maddi's chagrin.

"Everybody look in the lens—"

The photographer clicked the camera and the black-and-white photo, the original one flashed on the screen.

Cheers rang in the hall from the viewers. Kapil almost got off his seat to scrutinize the picture.

"There!" he said with satisfaction. "Did you see, Jim pa, all the other teams have their vice-captain standing second? Did you?"

"I didn't notice," said Jimmy, alarmed.

"You did, you're pretending not to, just like you did during the actual photograph," said Kapil.

"You're still hung up on that?" asked Maddi, who'd overheard in spite of Kapil's effort to keep his voice down.

"Yes, 'cause I still don't like the way Jim pa didn't take his rightful second position in the queue," explained Kapil.

"He's Mohinder Amarnath," said Maddi, by way of his own explanation.

"That's true," Kapil conceded.

Saqib, who was still gazing fixedly at his Jimmy sir, almost not blinking, saw him breathing a sigh of relief as Kapil sir turned back to the screen, grinning.

A/N: Not standing second in spite of being vice-captain, leaving the spot for Sunny, is just such a Jim pa thing to do, isn't it?