When Leander Paes was playing the final that would eventually lead to his 11th Gram Slam title, the Australian Open mixed double win with Cara Black this Sunday, wife Rhea Pillai was sitting in the Art of Living ashram in Bangalore hoping her television set would come back to life.
“Can you believe it? I had requested the ashram to please let me have a television set so I could watch him play. And then the electricity went off… so did my television.” No matter. Rhea called a friend who “walked me through the match point by point as it was happening… and when he won, I was just so happy!”
Rhea may not have been physically present with the man she fondly calls ‘Lee’ but in spirit she was all there. “All that meditation and chanting sends out good energy. I genuinely feel that, not jut for my family, but for everyone around.”
And good energy was what her man needed when she spoke to him before the crucial last match, as yet unknowing of the future. “I could sense he was wired, you have to know what to say at such moments. He feels a little calm when you talk of normal things. I told him all the sweet swamis were watching him on TV. And then I said: ‘Go have fun, we’ll chat after!’”
The ‘chatting after’ couldn’t be too intimate, as she recalls, laughing. “After the win, we spoke when he was being led for the drug testing, as is mandatory for all after matches. So...! But really, he deserves it, he has such incredible self belief, when he puts his mind to something, you know he’s going to work on everything to achieve it.”
Rhea has met both his doubles partner, the Zimbabwean Cara Black and her Aussie husband they call ‘Moose’. “She’s really a nice girl, very grounded. Her husband is into adventure sports… water skiing etc.”
Leander will be flying in straight to the ashram from Australia. There is the big win to celebrate, naturally, before more tournaments in February for which Rhea will be accompanying him. “When he started his speech, he said ‘Jai Gurudev… it’s basically saluting the divine in you.” And then, down time with their daughter, three-year-old Aiyana beckons. Says Rhea, “After the win when they spoke, all she wanted to say was ‘When is my papa coming home?!’”
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