A riot awaits Virat Kohli once he opens the door of his Range Rover. It's a warm Tuesday in Mumbai, and he seems at ease with the madness swirling around this shopping mall, where crowds wait for him to talk about luxury watches they can't afford. As the captain of the Indian cricket team, he's probably the most famous person in India, which makes him one of the most famous people in the world. He lives a strange life, but like the frog being boiled alive, he doesn't seem to grasp its weirdness. Exhibit A: the unflustered look on his face as he steps out of the car and 50 security guards muscle him through a screaming, swaying, chanting crowd and deposit him in a narrow Tissot watch boutique for an event. People outside push toward the door. Looking at the unbroken wall of bodies, I ask nervously how we will manage to leave this store. For the moment, we are barricaded inside. Kohli doesn't like tight spaces; he is so claustrophobic that he says he must have drowned in one of his past lives. Even in a car, sometimes he'll roll down the window and risk aggressive fan encounters. "Honestly, you can ask the people who have been around me," he says, "if I see two people coming at me with a phone, I panic."
He's learned to keep his cool in the unbreakable grip of adoration, which took some time. Like nearly all famous people, he hates being famous. Celebrity photographers stake out the apartment he shares with his wife, Anushka Sharma, one of Bollywood's most successful actresses and producers. He says their individual experiences with handling fame are a "massive, massive" part of their bond; there aren't two dozen people in the world who can understand the calculus of their lives. She's staggeringly beautiful, and he performs best when his team needs him most, both cultural ideals.
Together, they are India's ur-couple, their courtship tabloid fodder for years. The two finally got married six months ago in Tuscany and escaped to Finland for a honeymoon. They picked the Lapland capital city of Rovaniemi, 4 miles from the Arctic Circle, about as close to the North Pole as you can go while still enjoying room service. They checked into a snow-topped chalet and in the morning walked through the cold into the center of town. They felt astonished to have this freedom. None of the gossip writers or photographers knew where they were, and the locals didn't care. They went looking for coffee and, "We bumped into three Indians at a coffee shop," Kohli says, laughing. "What are the odds?"
Of course, there's a more visceral way to quantify the revolution. Just ask the most famous man in the country, who is married to one of the most famous women, what happens when nearly a billion people gain access to smartphones and the internet. Imagine Mickey Mantle starting his career with the backslapping writers on the train and ending it with TMZ chasing him through the streets. It's disorienting. Jio accidentally dropped a bomb into Virat Kohli's life. "That is great for a country that is developing," he says, "but as a known person, you get hunted in a way."
http://www.espncricinfo.com/espn/fe...he-strange-life-india-cricket-god-virat-kohli
A very long but interesting read but you can read the rest on Cricinfo.
He's learned to keep his cool in the unbreakable grip of adoration, which took some time. Like nearly all famous people, he hates being famous. Celebrity photographers stake out the apartment he shares with his wife, Anushka Sharma, one of Bollywood's most successful actresses and producers. He says their individual experiences with handling fame are a "massive, massive" part of their bond; there aren't two dozen people in the world who can understand the calculus of their lives. She's staggeringly beautiful, and he performs best when his team needs him most, both cultural ideals.
Together, they are India's ur-couple, their courtship tabloid fodder for years. The two finally got married six months ago in Tuscany and escaped to Finland for a honeymoon. They picked the Lapland capital city of Rovaniemi, 4 miles from the Arctic Circle, about as close to the North Pole as you can go while still enjoying room service. They checked into a snow-topped chalet and in the morning walked through the cold into the center of town. They felt astonished to have this freedom. None of the gossip writers or photographers knew where they were, and the locals didn't care. They went looking for coffee and, "We bumped into three Indians at a coffee shop," Kohli says, laughing. "What are the odds?"
Of course, there's a more visceral way to quantify the revolution. Just ask the most famous man in the country, who is married to one of the most famous women, what happens when nearly a billion people gain access to smartphones and the internet. Imagine Mickey Mantle starting his career with the backslapping writers on the train and ending it with TMZ chasing him through the streets. It's disorienting. Jio accidentally dropped a bomb into Virat Kohli's life. "That is great for a country that is developing," he says, "but as a known person, you get hunted in a way."
http://www.espncricinfo.com/espn/fe...he-strange-life-india-cricket-god-virat-kohli
A very long but interesting read but you can read the rest on Cricinfo.
