Chp 160. The greatest gift of all

aka “My Arsenal Santa”

Last night, Santa came by and gave me a belated X’mas gift: A Manchester United defeat followed by an Arsenal victory, ensuring that Arsenal is back on top of the Table for the year ending 2007.

That’s not all that my Arsenal Santa gave me; Last year, my Arsenal Santa gave me the following :

[ Chp 99. Christmas in Mizoram ]

And this year, the same Santa arrived at Delhi two days ago directly from Heathrow Airport and got for me the following X’mas gifts:

Cool aye? This post is dedicated to my ex-roomie and one of my closest friends: Amos aka “Goldmember” aka “FadeNoMore”.


[ Great Mug. Perfect for holding the Christmas/New Year party beer, punch and coffee. Except that nobody can drink from it other than true Arsenal fans. ]


[ An alarm clock to alert me whenever there is an Arsenal match coming up. And an authentic Arsenal cap to wear on a cold Delhi night. This isn’t one of those cheap knock-offs you find where below the Arsenal Logo is the name “Kaka” or “Zidane”. ]


[ An Arsenal Piggy bank! So that I can start saving up my coins so that one day I can buy a ticket to watch my team play at Emirates Stadium. As of now, the money box is filled with chocolates. Authentic Arsenal chocolates. They taste just like Arsenal too. ]


[ More Arsenal stuff to hang on my already filled up wall. But the thing with Arsenal is that, there can never be “too many”. There is always space for anything that is slightly related to the Club. ]

Last night was amazing. It was my girl-friend’s brother’s birthday, so we had a lot of friends over for dinner. And it turned out that I was the only Gunners fan in the room. Three types of conversations took place.

The first was the strictly football debate. This took place among us guys. After Man Utd lost, I was making so much fun of them that everybody decided to gang up on me. Oh I had a terrible time during first half when Arsenal was down 0-1. But I stood my ground, and in the second half, Arsenal, the team with the best come-back record in the League, came back with a triumphant 4-1 win! He who laughs last, laughs the longest. Touché.

The second type of conversation took place among the wives and girlfriends.

Wife1: Oh this is soooo boring!
Wife2: I swear!
GF-1: Look at them. They are behaving just like kids.
Wife3: I know. Aren’t they cute!
GF-2: Awwwww… choo chweet.

The third type of conversation took place among the guys again. This time, it was between the football lovers and those guys with no interest in sports.

He-1: Dude, I don’t know how you guys can go completely crazy over football. I don’t see any excitement or pleasure from watching it.
Me : It’s a personal preference dude. By the way… urrmmm… nice nail polish and eyeliner you’re wearing. They match perfectly.
He-1: Thanx dude.
He-2: What I don’t understand is how you guys can be so into football, when those players have no idea you even exist. It’s like you’re all a big bunch of wannabes.
Me : Excuse me? THIS coming from a person who dresses up in the entire gangsta Hiphop attire all the time, braids his hair even though he doesn’t have the right facial and hair features for it, wears his bling-blings even to bed, cover his entire wall and ceiling with Hiphop posters, pierced his ears only because 50 Cents did it, and use words like “Yo”, “dawg” and “biatch” even while talking in Mizo????
He-2: See… Hiphop is different…

So I guess that’s what we are. We all have our own likes and peeves. And football is one of my biggest passions. Do those players that we watch on TV ever care about my terrible toothache or my pathetic little blog? No, and I really don’t care. As long as I get an occasional break from my hectic life and prevent me from going completely insane, I will always put football at the number one spot.

And nobody can take that away from me, not even the arrogant cynic with a megalomaniac ego who utters, “Instead of wasting your time discussing about your stupid football, why don’t you think of intellectual ways to improve the development of Mizoram or eradicating poverty and corruption from our State or preserving our culture and identity?” Heh??? Screw you. Two hours a week is all I spend on football.

Don’t let anyone ever try to take away anything that you cherish dearly. Always stand firmly by what you believe in, be it Arsenal, ManUtd, cricket, music or God. And with that I wish you all a very happy New Year.