Starstruck

On my flight from Chandigarh to Hyd (via Delhi), I saw a girl get on who looked vaguely familiar. Almost instantly I figured out that this was an actress, and definitely a lesser-known one. From that point on, this is sort of how my thoughts went - "Hmm, she looks familiar. You know what, she must be one of those N. Indian actresses who act in Telugu movies in small roles or item numbers. What is her name?" About 30 minutes pass. I couldn't recollect either her first name or her last name. So I decided that since she's traveling from Chandigarh, her last name must be "Kaur". So I wondered, "Hmm, Kaur. OK, what Kaur? Think, think, think." And finally I decided to try the brute force method and ran down the letter of the alphabet. "A something Kaur? B something Kaur?" When I finally came to N, her name popped up in my head "Navneet Kaur". She's done some item numbers and maybe even a small movie somewhere. Sadly I arrived at her name after boarding my Hyd flight, or I would have tried to talk to her. Or so I told myself.

As if to test my theory, on my return journey, in Hyderabad, a beautiful woman boarded the flight. This one I recognized. Anuskha Shetty. (She looks even more beautiful in real life than in her movies.) Before the shock wore off, I realized her seat was right across the aisle from me. Oh geez, thank you very much God for calling me out on my "I'd talk to an actress if I remembered her name" bluff. So for the remaining two hours I tried to think of some smart way to talk to her. Since she was across the aisle from me, I didn't want to have a lengthy conversation but I did want to wish her a Happy Birthday (her birthday was a couple of days ago) and tell her I liked her in "Arundhathi". But there wasn't a good time at all. She went to sleep almost immediately, and when she wasn't sleeping, she was reading a book on Yoga (She used to be a yoga instructor before becoming an actress). Even at the Delhi airport I saw her a few times and she even walked right in front of me but I totally chickened out. There's always a next time to try out my "be cool with a celebrity" behavior.

BTW, it wasn't totally random that I saw two actresses during my Hyd trip. There was a fundraiser in Hyderabad to generate money for the victims of the recent floods and almost every single big actor/actress in Telugu was in town. So I was bound to run into some or the other actor. Also, the reason I knew it was Anushka's birthday two days ago was because they announced it at the fundraiser.