Dear Mr Sardesai A very happy New Year to you and yours I’ve recently watched a discussion on YouTube among you, Shashi Tharoor and Gideon Haig at the Jaipur Literatrue Festuval. If I may, a few minutes of your time, i wanted to share a few of my thoughts. I live in upstate New York, quite far from the nearest cricket field. I’ve watched you on a number of Indian television shows, and meant to write a little earlier. When I first saw you on a news show a couple of years ago, I noticed your surname, distinctive, and I was aware of only one other person who had it. It was the autumn of ‘84 or ‘85, I was working at a General Practitioner’s clinic in Earl’s Court in London. My boss, the GP, was a gentle old fellow from Calcutta. Some of the patients at the clinic were passersby, not registered with the clinic, this because of its location. There was a gentleman standing on the pavement, just outside the front door, one late, bright afternoon. He appeared fairly tall, well-built, with neat hair, a smart suit under a creamish gray, light raincoat. He carried a briefcase. He walked in, strode up to the front desk and politely asked to see the doctor. He put his name down on the clipboard, D. Sardesai. The surname is not one I’d come across often, there was only one I had heard of, Dilip Sardesai. I was a cricket fan, actually I was mad about the game, if truth be told, in those days. (All that changed when I came to the United States for further medical training in the early 90’s, before the internet took off, but that’s another story). I hesitated, then quietly asked him if he was indeed the cricketer. He said yes, and smiled. We didn’t say much, he was there to see the GP, a cold or some such symptoms. I don’t remember if I told him I’d seen him play in ‘74 on the England tour, Ajit Wadekar’s Indians, and I can’t remember if he was on the Cricket Club of India (CCI) side I’d seen as a schoolboy in Nairobi in ‘70 or ‘71. It’s stayed with me that I met your father for a few minutes, and I wanted to share that with you. I was very familiar with the Indian sides of those years, the mesmerizing spinners, and Gavaskar, Vishwanath among a whole host of others, the elegant Vengsarkar, and your father a solid batsman. The CCI side i saw in Nairobi was captained by Hanumant Singh, and included Abbas Ali Baig , who got a flashy hundred, Vishwanath, two very powerful hundreds from him, Vijay Manjrekar (whose son Sanjay I saw play for Nairobi Gymkhana about 20 years later) and Salim Durrani. I also understand your father’s from Goa. My family’s from Nairobi, migrants to Kenya from the Punjab in India, now part of Pakistan, in the late 1890’s. All of my schooling was at a predominantly Goan school, St Teresa’s in Nairobi now 50 years ago. My friends were mostly of Goan heritage. The diaspora, as they say, now in England, some in Canada. A friend from school has now gone to Goa to retire, never having lived there in his earlier life. A circular world. Thank you for your time, i wanted to share with you my meeting your father, for a few minutes, many years ago. Whenever I’ve seen you on TV, it reminds me of that brief encounter. Sometimes I watch the cacophony of news, chorus, debates, on Indian TV on YouTube. Keep up the good and difficult work that you do, it informs many people of the state of play in your country, as we all go through these difficult times. If only the noise could be kept dawn a bit on television, and not just in india. Thank you, and stay safe. Yours sincerely, Sandy upstate New York