That night, Jatin, Tony and I went pub-hopping in Oxford – certainly the highlight of our trip. It was good to get to know Tony’s sensibility better too. Like when he’d ordered an unusual beer which he was having after a long time - I asked him if it brought back memories of any specific time. He said it reminded him of when he had visited his friend in a small town years ago and then walked through the pitch dark of the night, holding up glow-worms to illuminate the way ahead. A visual memory for the ages, I thought. 
(Jatin adds: By this time I had reached a comfortable state where I was floating from my soothing alcohol-flavoured thoughts to Jaideep and Tony’s conversation and back without feeling like I was missing anything. Or maybe that’s how random their conversation was.)
In the pitch dark of the Oxford night, a considerably drunk Jatin showed us a corridor at St John’s College – insisting with the conviction of well, a historian, that the notable scene of Abraham’s quad race in Chariots of Fire had been shot here (it was in fact shot at Trinity college, around the corner). Despite knowing him for a while, I’d never seen these levels of conviction in him – interesting what assorted beers can do to confidence levels – they might have all their advertising wrong actually.
Back in London, Jatin and I went to visit David Kendix at Lord’s to discuss Impact Index further. He had shown an interest in knowing more about its workings. Sadly, there was a domestic match going on and we were not allowed in, so David came out and we looked for a place to sit. The only restaurant in the vicinity was closed for a private party and we ultimately plonked down on a bench next to a bus-stop and opened up our laptop. David went through our entire methodology, right down to allocation of points, and even gave us a couple of interesting pointers. One of the many passersby turned out to be Haroon Lorgat who did a double take when he saw us there. After enquiring why we hadn’t gone into Lord’s, he muttered something about getting us an office soon.
While leaving, when David gave me his visiting card, I was stunned. He had a day job – as a senior manager at Aviva. Though, it wasn’t really incongruous with what I had observed before – Venu had a day job too, as did Simon Sweetman. It could be argued that Boria has a day job too. It’s a bit of a myth about cricket being big business. Even in India, cricket is not big business really, but the country winning in cricket is. It is an outlet for jingoism and transferable self-worth – THAT is big business. Even T20 is big business when Indian players are involved, not otherwise.
Abbey Road studios was a two-minute walk from there, and as I made Jatin snap a couple of pictures of me walking on the most famous pedestrian crossing in history, it struck me how utterly stiff Brit lip this whole thing was. There was no plaque, no sign, nothing. Traffic was flowing by as if it was just another road, instead of the most visual reminder of the greatest music band the world has ever seen. Just this once, I missed the American way of doing things.
Like most trips, I wanted to commemorate it through one new song that would forever remind me of this trip. I’d thought the newly-released cricket-themed album called The Duckworth Lewis Method would yield something for that purpose – given that Neil Hannon has written some wonderful songs with Divine Comedy. But the album was disappointing musically – affable, pleasant but rather forgettable – the lyrics were often witty, even sparkling (like “Jiggery Pokery”, from Mike Gatting’s point-of-view when Shane Warne bowled him – “How such a ball could be bowled I don't know/ but if you ask me/ if it had been a cheese roll it would never have got past me.”) but this is a great example of why lyrics are so obviously a support act in songwriting.
I finally got my song from one of the unheard tracks on my iPod – Andrew Bird’s “Fitz and Dizzy Spells” – the beautiful studio version with its absolutely breathtaking beginning gave me the soundtrack to this journey (and as I realised much later – so much was lyrically relevant too). So, finally a Chicago song provided a permanent home to an Indian in England – thank you Deb and Nick.
At the end of the journey, as we mulled over the last few days, as British Airways offered us vegetarian again saying they had run out of non-veg (again! how could this be a coincidence?), as Jatin drifted in and out of sleep right through the flight, as I mulled over what kind of crossroads I found myself at when we touched down, I realised we’d just had an experience of a lifetime. Whatever happens from here (or more likely, doesn’t), the innocence in the anticipation of the last few days would always stay with us.
British Airways made it a bit more predictable when we landed in Mumbai. Jatin’s bag hadn’t arrived.
It came the next day though. Along with Sreeram's visa.
jaideep@cartwheelfeatures.com
jatin@holdingwilley.com
Captions: Sreeram Ramachandran, Art Design: Paramvir Singh, Caricatures: Rajnikanth S