Clicking the celebrity

Leicester Square was bustling with people. Revelers, travelers, Londoners. Sunshine streamed down like a happy downpour. It was that kind of a day. When even strangers would smile at you like you were long lost friends; when you could walk into any restaurant and blindly pick anything on the menu, and it would still turn out to be fantabulous. ‘Haagen Daz or Ben & Jerry?’, SS asked me after random-selection-from-the-menu-turned-fantabulous lunch. One of each seemed like a good option but I had a random vision of words like calories, healthy diet and fat free and I narrowed down on Ben & Jerry. What was the clincher, you ask? – easier to pronounce (oh by the way the dietary aspect, only means – ‘No two, only one’)

I realize I have this slight problem with ice cream places; where you stand in a long queue, all the while mentally weighing the exotic options available and suddenly you are bang at the counter – ‘What would you like Sir’. Black out. True humble self takes over – ‘Double scoop – Vanilla’. Freak.

But I am working on not getting overwhelmed with such predictable surprises in life. So I exercised restraint and managed to order something not Vanilla (I think it was double scoop Strawberry. Anyways never mind) while SS delved deep into her double rich chocolate ice cream with chocolate chips and more chocolate or something as exotic to that effect. ‘Was that on the menu?’, I asked doubtfully. ‘Hmmm’, came the reply. Some people have all the luck.

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We watched the seven ‘o’ clock show at the Lyceum. And after Simba was crowned king and Sir John’s ‘Circle of Life’ was rendered and the Korean next to us had stopped clicking pictures (the London Zoo was closed that day and there are no lions at the Seoul Zoo I hear. So the bloke decided to come and watch Lion King!!!), we were walking back to the tube station when the glimmer of lights struck us. It was at the theatre playing ‘Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat’. Red carpet rolled out and cameras flashing in blinding continuity. And somewhere in the middle of that tumultuous hullah-bullah, a curly haired tuxedo clad smart man was signing autographs with a ‘everyone will get one’ smile. ‘Take photo’, I nudged SS. Mobile out of holster, we clicked some random pictures of the red carpet cacophony and the autograph signing celebrity. Always wanted to be a page 3 journalist. Take random pictures and write random footnotes of random people. What fun. We stepped aside and watched a short Chingi man emerge out of the huddle, buoyantly armed with a digital SLR that in the armory world is probably a Kalashnikov. He could not stop smiling appreciatively as he flipped through the prized photographic moments on his LCD screen. ‘We may not know who the curly haired man is’, I told SS. ‘But he knows and he values it’. The man by now had stepped out of his euphoric alpha state and seeing us looking at him appreciatively approached us gingerly. He then pointed to the huddle out of which he had just emerged and asked – ‘Who it is?’