Soliloquy

MARGAO, INDIA: The heat does not seem as stifling anymore, and the sweat drips off my back into my clothes even as I wait patiently outside the airport in Dabolim. With a horde of tourists flocking to Goa every month, the town of Vasco da Gama seems outright barren and downright impenetrable, in the absence of the colour-blocked clothes one is usually used to seeing.

In Margao, the air is filled with the anticipation of a great night to come. Despite Cristiano Ronaldo’s obvious distaste for his Indian supporters and amid cries of the natives giving as good as they got (“Cancel his Portuguese citizenship!”), the Fatorda is filled to the brim. Al-Nassr eventually walk home with a 2-1 victory, but not before the home team, FC Goa, run them mightily close.

Local lad Brison Fernandes, born in Loutolim, less than 10 kilometres away from the furnace at the Fatorda, etches his name in the history books by becoming the first Indian ever to score a goal in the AFC Champions League Two. Are such scripts written in the stars? That in the ‘biggest night in Indian football,’ a scrawny 21-year-old local boy should get the better of the oil-money-enriched Saudis?

Acquaintances and friends – Cicero D’Silva, Marcus Mergulhao, Princiscia Mascarenhas, Bruno Rodrigues, Alberto Costa, Wendy Neves, Vishlesh Mapsekar, Rudra Pathak and Anil Prabhudessai – all press on me their typical Goan hospitality, and that I should end the evening with xacuti (mushroom, and not pork) and a lingering aroma of vindaloo does seem to be written in the stars. The cafreal, meanwhile, has been run out of, and this leaves a tinge of disappointment.

The memories of a winter spent three years ago plaster me with a nostalgia for the deep south of the Goan coast, which I shall not graze past this time; for all my visits to our south-western neighbours since then, the renewal of faith seems as unlikely as the presence of the Salvador do Mundo church in Loutolim. There may be some hope, both for me, and Indian football, after all.

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