Eventful to say the least

Arseblog.com. Yes, it is two words, "arse" and "blog". What if I told you that I read a blog named so.

Despite sounding eerily like exactly the kind of website you would be wary of your 12 year old son coming across and like the kind of content that one does not speak openly of reading, that too on his own blog, I confess, I read it almost daily. Because the subject of the blog is not the "Arse", it's something bigger. Bigger by three letters in fact. The Arsenal. Arsenal Football Club from Islington in North London.

To say I follow keenly, the club and the team is something of an understatement. Perhaps it is the entity that occupies my cranium for the largest proportion of time in the holidays and surely comes a close second to physics in similar statistics for term months.

About a week back, I was basking in the glory of The Arsenal winning the FA Cup, football's oldest knockout cup-competition, thus ending a tumultuous period of nine years without winning a single competitive trophy, in the middle of which run I began to support the club and join the family of "Gooners". Despite it being more than 10 days ago, I recall perfectly what happened on that Saturday night; probably will do so for the rest of my life.

It is hard to explain. A gush, an absolute tsunami of happiness. At that instant everything else feels insignificant. All else is in fact insignificant. I'm not really sure what I did, just sure what I felt. Having subdued a yelp of happiness (for fear of drawing the entire neighbourhood to my doorstep), I clenched my fist, held back the tears when THAT goal was scored with ten minutes of the game left and anxiously continued to watch the final of the FA Cup.

Ten minutes, and about 7645349834 minor as well as major cardiac-arrests later, the referee blew the whistle that signaled the end of the game, thus sounding like the end to all suffering humanity endures, giving way to unmitigated delight that had me retaining a smile on my face for nearly three days. The tears flowed, then stopped, then flowed, then stopped. My skin resembled the Himalayas, the Alps and the Andes combined. All was glee, my friends, fans of rival clubs grudgingly registered their congratulations.

That summed it up for me. I didn't do a thing. Yet they all congratulated me. And all my fellow Gooners. They said, "You guys deserved to win the trophy". I didn't win a thing; but it was a victory for all of us. A feeling of belonging that is unparalleled. No wonder that sport has captured the imagination of humanity for time immemorial. And beyond a point, it isn't about success, winning, patriotism, ideology or particular individuals. The beginning is mysterious. And after that, the sense of belonging simply endures. To quote two great footballers, Arsenal, Ajax and Dutch legend Dennis Bergkamp and some Manchester Uniter Player Eric Cantona :

"When you start supporting a football club, you don't support it because of the trophies, or a player, or history. You support it because you found yourself somewhere there, found a place where you belong." 
Dennis Bergkamp 

"You can change your wife, your politics, your religion, but never, never can you change your favourite football team." 
Eric Cantona 

The week following the cup has been eventful, to say the least. It was followed by a five day trip to Himachal Pradesh, the land of the Himalayas. After that, meeting up with old friends, rolling back the years back in Bangalore. Yet it is the memories of a Cup victory of a wee football team 8000 kilometres from my home that rightfully should have absolutely nothing to do with a young Indian boy that is still fresh in my memory.

Thank You Arsenal, and Thank You Arsene Wenger.

Refresh

Earlier today, I found myself in that state of half-sleep and half-consciousness, when one alternates between questioning the workings of the universe, brain-storming for solutions to cross-border infiltration, wondering at the implications of a BJP government or feeling a hypnagogic jerk to startle you into waking up and saner thoughts.

In case you are wondering, a hypnagogic jerk is not a psychotic snobbish individual, as the name would suggest, but rather is the phenomenon where one experiences the feeling of falling down just as he/she is about to stroll into the dREMland. (Ok, that's a horrible pun) 

Going back to what is germane to the issue at hand, I was wondering where I was a year back, in the summer of 2013. And a year before that. And where I am today. It's a refreshing exercise. If your life has not changed overwhelmingly, if the intervening 12 months have not held surprises, joys and stories to tell your grand-kids, something is amiss and you must strive, I think, to ensure that the next 12 months don't find you rotting in the same monotony. 

So let me refresh. mid-May, 2012, where was I? Literally and figuratively. Literally, it is quite probably I was exactly where I am, in my room, on the bed. Not staring at a laptop screen, probably was staring at a mechanics book. On average, the title of the book was probably "Classical Mechanics for IITJEE". Arihant Publications. My insides cringe when I hear the name : Arihant Publications. It took the soul out of the quite beautiful science that the syllabus for the Senior Secondary School designed by the Central Board of Secondary Education contains, by turning it into a mere exercise of learning to get through "competitive exams" instead of encouraging us to develop a critical eye for science and to peer into the depths of the beauty of the science of how the world works. No book ever caused one to dreamily stare at the roof, wondering at the philosophy of why the attractive force of gravity has to follow an equation described in the language of mathematics. It is like God (read "chance" if you are an atheist) made the rules and then left things by themselves to assemble into something meaningful, and the precise balancing of centripetal force and centrifugal force caused a planet of just the right size, with just the right particles, with just the right period of rotation at just the right distance from a star of just the right brightness at just the right time period in the right universe (in case of the existence of a multi-verse) to support life, and hence us, and hence our ability to dream and think about it.

I was probably talking on the phone for extended periods of time (you do not see the twinkle in my eye), was probably watching an Arsenal match on the telly. Life was focussed on one thing only, academics. All else was secondary. 

Mid- May 2013. Actually, I know exactly where I was on May 12th, 2013. At the Dayananda Sagar Institute of Technology, some dozen kilometres from my residence, sweating over problems in maths, physics and chemistry (that books of the Arihant Publications avatar had taught me to tackle) while also trying to keep my keep my urethral sphincter closed to the gush of urine desperate to exit my system. Not a pleasant balancing act. 

The period of time was the home-run of a protracted exam festival, all "competitive". I have no idea what that word means. What is so "competitive" about them, which is lacking in every other exam. It has simply been institutionalised. (Listen to Morgan Freeman say the word)

Now, here I am, in the summer of 2014, middle of May, the warm Bangalore night air, after two days of sun which were preceded by a week of rain. Still pleasant, still inspiring all that is good. I'm reading voraciously, sleeping peacefully, roaming around town in my favourite blue-white BMTC buses (sometimes the red Volvo) and now updating my blog. Surely my zenith. Will I ever get such ample free time again in my life? It's a shaky ground. The answer tends towards no. New college friends who have been friends long enough to share a certain closeness and bond and old school friends who have been away short enough to still retain the closeness and bond. Arsenal finally in the finals of a Cup tournament, looking end a torturous 9 year wait for victory in any competition, apart from the Emirates Cup, which if you remotely follow football, will know is a little more prestigious than the "my street vs your street" cricket matches played in younger days. 

I like to take the view that right now, these two months of vacation, will be the last extended period of leisure that I can enjoy with age on my side. I hope to make it a time of unmitigated joy, new experiences, deep introspection and most importantly, full of memories. Time that is lost, never comes back, and my dreams are waiting for me. 

So if you will excuse me, I have to go and be a huge hypocrite, aimlessly surf the internet, "like" some memes, watch old Arsenal videos, while away two months. That's a lot to do!