He was three feet away from me, and I didn’t know who he was

Couple years ago, the color yellow presented itself to me in the most beautiful shape/form: a song. The video of this song presented an exuberant palette of yellow. I heard this song countless times. I admired every bit about it: the situation, the video, the mood, the actors, the dancers, the singers and, of course, the music.

Now let’s step back:

A couple weeks ago when IIFA (Bollywood Stuff) was hosted in Toronto, I joined the enormous crowds to cheer endlessly for my fellow Indian celebrities. I cheered in awe of their capacity to entertain the Indian crowds and for shining a light on India that helped accelerate it’s recovery from the ‘Poor, Third World country‘ Image to what it is today. While I waited outside of the Rogers Center where the awards were being hosted, I saw celebrities pass by in their IIFA marked cars. They would modestly lower down their window and wave to the crowds. I recognized most of the celebrities. In the midst of the hundred something cars, I saw a red car and a gentleman roll down his window. I had no clue who he was. He was three feet away from me. I could easily converse with him if I wanted to. But who was he? He stared back in our direction, almost eager to see who would recognize him. He had to be someone. He was going to take a picture of us, but I turned away. My sister and I agreed that we wouldn’t pose for any ‘crazy fan’ pictures.  Oh well. ‘Probably one of those technicians or cameramen’, I thought.

A couple days later I found out. My friends, the gentleman in that car was none other than the music director of the song I heard three years ago. It was Salim- (from the Salim-Sulaiman duo) who composed the song Haule Haule. I wish I could tell him how much that song meant to me. I wish.