Can't promise you the world, but... (A Rohit-Shreyas Fanfiction)

Chapter 2

2017

His stupidity had started when, a month after his international debut in T20s, Shreyas first entered an India ODI senior camp in December 2017.

India was playing Sri Lanka for a 3-match series, and Virat Kohli had been rested for his upcoming wedding and Rohit Sharma been made temporary captain for the first time.

Shreyas had seen Rohit and played alongside him occasionally for Mumbai's domestic cricket. For as long as he could remember, Rohit had been a regular part of India's senior circuit, placing him at the receiving end of both awe and more than a little nastiness from the domestic players, both from a distance.

That was the general rule in domestic cricket: steer clear of national level players; domestic players were not worth their time.

So Shreyas had always steered clear of Rohit in the Mumbai camp, where Rohit would be present only for brief stretches of time when India was playing Tests and he wasn't part of the squad, and then he would be flying to join the national team whenever the ODIs or T20s came, and whenever he regained his on-again, off-again place in the Test squad.

Out of habit, Shreyas steered clear of him over his debut series as well, which had comprised of three unremarkable T20 matches as far as his performance was concerned. Even though Rohit was the only Marathi in the squad apart from him, Shreyas found Virat a much more approachable person once he was greeted with the sight of him and Hardik being slapped by MS Dhoni for setting fire to a fake plant, and Shreyas didn't cross paths with Rohit bhaiya a lot till Virat bhaiya flew off.

The day Team India had their flight to Dharamsala for the first ODI, there was an uproar five minutes before they had to get on the bus, because Rohit had declared with a coffee cup in his hand that he had looked everywhere and simply couldn't find his passport.

The entire team spread out to check with Dhawan dispatching people to various places Rohit's room, the dining room, the gym, etc. Shreyas, who had been allocated one of the elevators, recalled the empty paper cup in Rohit's hand and ran to the room once to check the dustbin.

"Here, I found it," Shreyas called down the stairs.

"Thank goodness!" Rohit bhaiya said, sprinting up to snatch the passport and examine his name carefully. "Where was it?"

"In your room's dustbin," said Shreyas, proudly.

"And you checked the dustbin because?" asked DK with some exasperation and a bit of admiration.

"Since Rohit bhaiya's going around with an empty cup in his hands, I figured he might have gone to drop that in the dustbin and dropped the passport instead."

Everyone roared with laughter except Mahi bhai, who looked his wristwatch and sighed.

"Either you're a detective--which you don't look like--or you've faced this too, haven't you?" Rohit asked Shreyas sympathetically.

"Er, sometimes. A lot of times."

"That's the spirit," said Rohit, punching him on the shoulder, placing the passport on the banisters and starting to lug two of the suitcases down the stairs. 

"You left the passport on the banisters again," called Shreyas.

"Wow, you do have a lot of experience in this field," Rohit bhaiya called back. "Grab it, will you?"

__________________

Once you've retrieved someone's passport from the dustbin, it was difficult to perceive them in awe.

So when Rohit offered Shreyas the seat beside him in the waiting lounge, Shreyas complied, and they had a very interesting two hours discussing their most bizarre encounters with forgetting things, because Rohit insisted forgetful people didn't need to feel sorry for themselves for the flak they received from the world and should instead wear their forgetfulness proudly on their sleeve.