From Muscat to Madras, with coffee, dates and love

An Indo-Omani fan living in Chennai relives India's clash with the Reds as he finds his loyalties torn between his roots and his adopted homeland.

“The home is where the heart is.”

Elvis Presley made a song out of it, while I ended up having to make choices.

Oman or India? I couldn't make a choice back then and I still couldn't on Thursday. When the Omanis took on the Blue Tigers, I didn't know where my heart was.

Presley sir couldn't help me either, for I have found a home in both places.

Now, football fandom (or any sport fandom for that matter) is usually simple. You root for the jersey from your hometown. It's a matter of geographical proximity at the end of the day.

You might find yourself cheering for teams which aren't in your usual bus commute, say like Manchester United or Bayern Munich, but that's okay too.

Love doesn't need a license to run through you. It just happens, magically.

And when it does, you find yourself in the stands at Highbury or at the Bernabeu, as if you had been brought there as a kid every weekend of your life.

Again, this is the story of every John walking down the road. It's easy, you like a team because you find a home in them and stand by them through thick and thin. A monogamous relationship is what it is.

Before I delve into my analysis of a polygamous relationship, I should let you in on a few things about myself. Born in Western Uttar Pradesh, tucked in a neat city called Bareilly to Tamil parents; I was a cultural dissonance right from day one. I spent the first seven years of my life in that town, growing up and learning to love Hindi, Shah Rukh Khan, Doordarshan, Rooh-Afza, Shaktiman and Amul.

Beautiful, isn't it?

Now, this is where we rumble up the order of things. Every good story needs this little shake-up to keep the show running, right? Long story short, dad got a lucrative transfer to Oman; we shifted base to the Gulf kingdom.

Strangely, the transition to an Omani lifestyle was simple. Partly because Oman in itself is a little India; cluttered with NRIs who crossed the Arabian Sea to oil-rich lands. The cultural transition was slight, but definitely noticeable.

Oman was where I met football.

My first tryst with football wasn’t an European club nor on the ground or in a video game. It was with a rusty Murphy radio on a cold January night.

The 2009 Gulf Cup final between Oman and Saudi Arabia. The underdogs and the tournament favourites were goalless after extra-time.

The only reason why the outcome of the match mattered to me was a holiday. The Sultan has had the custom of declaring a national holiday whenever Oman wins the Gulf Cup, which wasn’t often.

The last penalty was to be taken by Saudi Arabia and Ali Al-Habsi was in the goal.

If he saves it, Oman lift the trophy.

The shot-stopper has played for numerous EFL Championship clubs

Al-Habsi saved it.

He didn’t matter to me before that game, but after that save he became my hero. The hero who gave me a holiday.

Since that night, the Omani football team mattered to me and it wasn’t for a holiday anymore.

Many kids were named Al-Habsi that year. Hell, I would have named my kid after that gentle giant if I had the chance!

Let’s run ahead a few years now and skip a lot of personal melodrama to come to 2013. I had moved back to India by then and fit the typical Indian teen stereotype of an ignorant cricket fan. IPL and World Cup, loop.

But, when the Indian Super League came in 2014, it came loud and proud. Glitzy and flashy as the IPL, packed stadiums, loud chants, marquee foreign players, celebrity owners, big money. The corporates had struck gold in Indian football. Moreover, the tournament had a franchise from Chennai, ‘Chennaiyin FC’!

With it came back my dormant love for football, Al-Habsi now had to share the mantel in my heart with the Marina Machans.

Soon, as the years passed by, my heart began to clutter incessantly. Arsenal, Die Mannschaft, Sunil Chhetri, Sergio Ramos, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, all had taken my heart into Horcrux-like pieces. Al-Habsi still existed, but in a long forgotten corner which I often refused to look back at. With flashier players and teams in the fray, Al-Habsi sat on the rocking chair like a grandpa past his prime.

I began to write about Indian football somewhere in mid-2018 and all the fellow journalists and bloggers in the industry were Indians, who had their roots deep in the Indian team (surprised?).

My editor wanted me to write a chronicle of my fandom as an Indo-Omani (I coined that word) football fan ahead of the 2022 FIFA World Cup Qualifying clash between the teams.

It was at that moment, Ali Al-Habsi got up from his rocking chair and dusted his boots. (Ironically, Al-Habsi has retired from the national team but you get the metaphor, don’t you?)

This affair brought me a weird gooey feeling which can’t be penned down. It was as if you had found your first vintage toy after years, which you thought was lost and in your other hand, you had the latest gizmo with all the cool features.

The Indian team played an electric first half against Oman

This match to me was a battle between practicality and sentiment.

I wouldn’t win either way, but nor would I lose with any outcome.

Frankly, speaking, the Indians under Igor Stimac haden't exactly found their mojo and were already up against a team whom they had never beaten. The defense had shown itself to be porous and was a striker’s wet fantasy.

I had braced for the hosts to lose; the Blue Tigers would score, but not win.

Keeping this in mind, I watched the match. Sunil Chhetri scored in the first half and the Omani side were held goalless. I thought to myself, “Dude, India might have sorted out the issues in their defense, they might actually pull off an upset today,” and began writing this at half-time with the predisposition of an Indian victory.

However, I later decided to wait for another 45 minutes for the match to end. The last time I celebrated early was when Barcelona beat Liverpool 3-0 at Camp Nou in the Champions League. (For those of you who don’t know, Liverpool ended up winning the second leg 4-0 at Anfield)

And I was right too.

Al-Mundhar Rabia scored twice in the last 10 minutes of the match. Both bangers.

Heart wrenching to see any team go down like that. I was hoping for history to be written on the night, but fate had different plans.

All of India is pissed at the lapses in defense in Thursday's game and so am I.

Yet, there is this little part in me going up to Al-Habsi sitting in his rocking chair, watching the game and telling him, “Welcome back to the mantel sir, I missed you, all this time”.

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Bitter like the coffee of Chikmagalur and sweet as the Omani dates is what I would call this day.

When eaten together, they make a killer combo.