I was sitting helpless and irritated in the “placement training” class in my college. It was last session and the English trainer wanted me to go over the dais and talk about the unforgettable day of my life. Ironically, that was the day that became the most memorable and unforgettable day of my life.
On 24th of May, I realized one of my dreams coming true. That evening I sped with my bike to Nungambakkam Landmark. Cars were parked all around and I had to park my bike at a corner and in the unrestrained joy, I slipped noticing that I was actually heading towards a place that’s between two iron rods, placed at about 5’ from the ground, used as scaffoldings. I did slide my bike amidst the two that were separated by a certain distance in air, but when I moved a little forward hoping to park my pulsar neatly..BANG… my head hit the iron rod and I felt butterflies flying around my head..but no time, I had to hurry, I moved back..BANG..the other one hit my head. Same happy butterflies flew over my head again! Ok Come on now..very meticulously, I parked it there and ran towards the basement. (At this juncture I would like to thank my helmet, the savior of my head and life, without which I would have either had serious head injuries or even the worse… thanks a lot brother!)
Landmark was already full; a small dais was set up with a chair, table and podium with mike, and lot of plastic chairs surrounding it. I ran into the place, banged on some guys and girls during the race-like-run…but wait a minute, not like the way your dirty mind drives u to think..those were only decent “unintentional” bangs..and as I neared the set where the chairs were arranged, I stood behind all of them and found the last one chair to be unoccupied. And then, there she was, a really cute and beautiful girl who walked charmingly to occupy that seat..but if you thought that I would have simply watched her take that seat with my lower jaw hitting the ground, I am sorry you’re wrong, I leaped forward to pull the blue chair away from her, placed it behind me, and happily sat awaiting the big show. She gave me a disgusting look but all I could do was give her back one such better disgusting looks of mine telling her “Sweetheart, I just cannot be the fool today because I want to be comfortable watching him speak on the dais”.
It was sharp 7 PM when the glass door was opened for him to enter the shop and all raised to applause the man, the legendary author and the master story teller – Jeffrey Archer…..
We all applauded joining our hands together for few minutes as he walked towards the dais waving his hand to the crowd.
I just couldn’t believe my eyes. Jeffrey Archer is, according to me, the world’s best author. I haven’t found any other author describing the emotions in such class. You might say Dan Brown, but na, too verbose for descriptions of emotions to reach people instantly and intensively. You might say Sydney Sheldon, except for daunt, I don’t reckon great description of emotions from him. But Jeff is a master; he can slash the others with his language and dons the way of describing actions, emotions and what not…everything. Although I can’t write stories like him, he inspires me to write short articles in the most expressive way and to me, he is the God of Writing.
At Landmark, Jeff started off talking about his life, how he started writing and what brought him fame and money. He told stories of how he strived to make his book Kane and Abel popular but miserably failed at every attempt and how one of the television hosts spoke just a line about the book that raised the rank of Kane and Abel into the Top 10 releases and eventually to the No.1 in the list. Jeff spoke for half an hour and was exhilarating us with hilarious and interesting stories of his life and the books. The last half an hour was questionnaire session and many barraged him with questions of all kind.. personal, writing related, inspiration, books related and just everything… for which this man had all the patience to answer even if the questions were silly. Some of the interesting points he made about India… Jeff seems to loathe the Indian Traffic so much that he often said he would want to be the Transport Minister for India…!! Commenting on T20 IPL, he said it’s not cricket at all!! He said.. “Cricket is the way Rahul Dravid and Laxman play in the heat under the sun for the whole day..”!
In the event Jeff spoke a lot on the way he writes…he said that he would take 55 days to complete his…no no not the book… but the First Draft!! And as he claims, Kane and Abel took him 18 drafts… seriously that’s a lot of patience and from that everybody could understand the passion he holds to produce great books..!!
After about an hour and fifteen minutes, he closed down the speech and the questionnaire session and sat on with the chair with the table forth him to start signing everyone’s books.. and he was very particular that he will sign every book regardless of time and effort it would take…
My brother had purchased his latest novel “A Prisoner of Birth” and was already standing in the queue before I could even turn and say something to him…!! Now that was unfair…I wanted to go and get it signed and my bro was in no mind to hand it to me…so I rushed to the counter and used my card to get another book, ran back to the queue and interrupted the line to stand behind my brother… Now where was this girl who wanted the chair sometime back??? I rolled my eyes all over the place so that I could look at her and point to the chair to say.. “hey you can use that now”..... but nope, she escaped the insult!!
And finally I was there on the dais with the man, the best author in the world signing my book…and as he signed I started to say
On 24th of May, I realized one of my dreams coming true. That evening I sped with my bike to Nungambakkam Landmark. Cars were parked all around and I had to park my bike at a corner and in the unrestrained joy, I slipped noticing that I was actually heading towards a place that’s between two iron rods, placed at about 5’ from the ground, used as scaffoldings. I did slide my bike amidst the two that were separated by a certain distance in air, but when I moved a little forward hoping to park my pulsar neatly..BANG… my head hit the iron rod and I felt butterflies flying around my head..but no time, I had to hurry, I moved back..BANG..the other one hit my head. Same happy butterflies flew over my head again! Ok Come on now..very meticulously, I parked it there and ran towards the basement. (At this juncture I would like to thank my helmet, the savior of my head and life, without which I would have either had serious head injuries or even the worse… thanks a lot brother!)
Landmark was already full; a small dais was set up with a chair, table and podium with mike, and lot of plastic chairs surrounding it. I ran into the place, banged on some guys and girls during the race-like-run…but wait a minute, not like the way your dirty mind drives u to think..those were only decent “unintentional” bangs..and as I neared the set where the chairs were arranged, I stood behind all of them and found the last one chair to be unoccupied. And then, there she was, a really cute and beautiful girl who walked charmingly to occupy that seat..but if you thought that I would have simply watched her take that seat with my lower jaw hitting the ground, I am sorry you’re wrong, I leaped forward to pull the blue chair away from her, placed it behind me, and happily sat awaiting the big show. She gave me a disgusting look but all I could do was give her back one such better disgusting looks of mine telling her “Sweetheart, I just cannot be the fool today because I want to be comfortable watching him speak on the dais”.
It was sharp 7 PM when the glass door was opened for him to enter the shop and all raised to applause the man, the legendary author and the master story teller – Jeffrey Archer…..
We all applauded joining our hands together for few minutes as he walked towards the dais waving his hand to the crowd.
I just couldn’t believe my eyes. Jeffrey Archer is, according to me, the world’s best author. I haven’t found any other author describing the emotions in such class. You might say Dan Brown, but na, too verbose for descriptions of emotions to reach people instantly and intensively. You might say Sydney Sheldon, except for daunt, I don’t reckon great description of emotions from him. But Jeff is a master; he can slash the others with his language and dons the way of describing actions, emotions and what not…everything. Although I can’t write stories like him, he inspires me to write short articles in the most expressive way and to me, he is the God of Writing.
At Landmark, Jeff started off talking about his life, how he started writing and what brought him fame and money. He told stories of how he strived to make his book Kane and Abel popular but miserably failed at every attempt and how one of the television hosts spoke just a line about the book that raised the rank of Kane and Abel into the Top 10 releases and eventually to the No.1 in the list. Jeff spoke for half an hour and was exhilarating us with hilarious and interesting stories of his life and the books. The last half an hour was questionnaire session and many barraged him with questions of all kind.. personal, writing related, inspiration, books related and just everything… for which this man had all the patience to answer even if the questions were silly. Some of the interesting points he made about India… Jeff seems to loathe the Indian Traffic so much that he often said he would want to be the Transport Minister for India…!! Commenting on T20 IPL, he said it’s not cricket at all!! He said.. “Cricket is the way Rahul Dravid and Laxman play in the heat under the sun for the whole day..”!
In the event Jeff spoke a lot on the way he writes…he said that he would take 55 days to complete his…no no not the book… but the First Draft!! And as he claims, Kane and Abel took him 18 drafts… seriously that’s a lot of patience and from that everybody could understand the passion he holds to produce great books..!!
After about an hour and fifteen minutes, he closed down the speech and the questionnaire session and sat on with the chair with the table forth him to start signing everyone’s books.. and he was very particular that he will sign every book regardless of time and effort it would take…
My brother had purchased his latest novel “A Prisoner of Birth” and was already standing in the queue before I could even turn and say something to him…!! Now that was unfair…I wanted to go and get it signed and my bro was in no mind to hand it to me…so I rushed to the counter and used my card to get another book, ran back to the queue and interrupted the line to stand behind my brother… Now where was this girl who wanted the chair sometime back??? I rolled my eyes all over the place so that I could look at her and point to the chair to say.. “hey you can use that now”..... but nope, she escaped the insult!!
And finally I was there on the dais with the man, the best author in the world signing my book…and as he signed I started to say
“Thank you for visiting India…”
“Oh..Thank you very much…It’s a pleasure” replied the Genius.
“And I am very very happy that I met you”
“OH…Thank you very very much!!”
And I was forced to get down because there was a queue replete with impatient fans to get their books signed. What surprised me was my brother who is renowned for screwing things up in the last minute..(except for the projects in wipro)… actually obeyed me and clicked a pic as I stood beside the great man…. Alas, one good deed for Gods to consider heaven for him….Later I took a close up shot of the star… The following are the pics…
Not many get to meet their inspiration easily and meeting Jeffrey Archer in India is unquestionably something I never expected in my life…. When everything seemed to be obtuse and arid in this phase of my life, this incident squeezed in all the energy and ecstasy… Jeff…You’ll live longer than you would want to, to enthrall us with amazing stories….. Thank you very much...
24th May 2008 will stay the second best day in my life so far… after 8th November 2004..
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