Without his curls and rocker's headband holding them back, Ajay Jayaram is nearly unrecognizable. Before you hit Google search, he's currently the country's highest-ranked men's singles badminton player.
"I would be happy if I get as much attention as the other male players," says the World No. 13, making light of his relative anonymity, "I feel I'm lacking in that as well."
Born in Chennai and raised in the quiet east Mumbai suburb of Chembur, once preferred by Bollywood stars from Ashok Kumar to the Kapoor clan for its 'far from the madding crowd' character, Ajay tells us, with no particular emotion, that he went to same school - OLPS Boys High - as actor Anil Kapoor.
Training in Bangalore, first at the Prakash Padukone academy and then under former England national coach Tom John - with a brief club stint in Portugal thrown in between - for close to 12 years, Ajay, 29, moved back to Mumbai a couple of months ago. A decision he seems pleased with, at least for the moment. "I wanted to get back home since I've been away, playing and travelling for so long," he says. "I largely train on my own now, with help from Mumbai-based coach Jitesh Padukone. No one's really giving me a schedule to follow so I have to figure out what I want to do every day. It's good because by now I know what works and what doesn't for me. I'm enjoying it."
When you run a finger through Ajay's career, you're accosted by his undercooked luck. He has missed out on Olympic appearances narrowly, and quite often, fallen just short of the confetti. Last year, he missed out on a third straight Dutch Open title after losing to second seed Tzu Wei Wang in the final.
Making two quarterfinals and one Superseries final - the 2015 Korea Open, where he ran into the mighty Chen Long, Ajay concedes it's the nerves. A whole bunch of them, in fact. "I need to tune myself better mentally," he says, analysing his so-near-yet-so-far runs. "When I'm on top I've the natural tendency to let go a bit. It's something I've struggled with in the past and an area I need to work on. But I don't want to look back."
Quiet and unassuming, Ajay, whose nearly nerdy non-badminton interests include sketching (which he's remarkably good at) and solving CAT-level math, is placed at least nine spots above the next Indian name - Sai Praneeth, who recently became only the second Indian male player after Kidambi Srikanth to win a Superseries title - in the world rankings. He's also older to the rest of the Indian pack, a fact that doesn't worry him a great deal. He takes it as a cue to get better and keep up the lead. "At the moment I'm not feeling the age," he says, "but yes, definitely when I look at the rest of the competition, they're much younger to me. But the way I'm playing currently, I think I'm in the best phase of my career. Hopefully I have a few good years left."
Battling extensive periods of injury, Cortisone-injected match appearances and a shoulder surgery three years ago which kept him off the court for six months, Ajay entered into this season on the back of some consistent performances - Superseries quarterfinals, GP Gold semis. "I would need results now," he says. "Not just quarters and semis, but breaking into the top 10 is what I'm looking at in the next couple of months. Reaching here has been hard and moving up will be even harder. Hopefully, I'll get that big win soon."
Precisely, 9650 points separate him from the No. 10-ranked Hong Kong's Ng Ka Long Angus. In fact, even between Ajay and the player ranked one spot above him at No. 12, there's a significant 5000-odd point difference.
The calendar ahead is packed - Sudirman Cup, Indonesia Open, Australian Open, but what he's set his heart upon is the World Championships in August. "I've always dreamt of a podium finish there, so that's going to be the big target for me."
Thanking his father, a sports enthusiast, for getting him to take badminton lessons as a child at the Chembur Gymkhana and not going harsh on him even when the poor string of results outnumbered the encouraging ones later in his career, Ajay says, "My parents take care of my travel and visa formalities for tournaments entirely and follow every single match of mine, irrespective of the place or time zone it's played in. Be it through live streaming or live scores, 2:00 am or 4:00 am, they're glued in. It's their support which has got me this far."
Ajay has a notorious reputation for once flooding a hotel floor in Malaysia: One that begun with an innocuous attempt at hanging the only jersey he was carrying, anticipating an early tournament exit, to dry. Chuckling to himself, he recalls, "I had finished my quarterfinal match, so once I got back to the room I washed my jersey for next day's semi-finals. What I thought was a hook, where I poked in the hanger holding the jersey to dry, turned out to be a fire sprinkler. Before I could realise, Sai, who was lying on the bed watching a movie, was drenched. He thought the roof had come off. Soon the entire room and floor was under water."
While it's been two years to this incident, Sai still drops a gentle reminder about holding on to soiled jerseys while sharing rooms.
For Ajay though, the blind alleys of self-doubt have long disappeared. In its place now stands renewed faith to pack more than one change of jersey.