Diwali / '24-25 Newcastle Away (1-0)

Sitting on Mandrem beach, watching the game on my tiny phone, I feel a crushing helplessness. Inevitability. We cannot win, like this. Crippled. Without our captain. Struggling for rhythm. Unable to find spaces, pockets to probe. Newcastle’s bullying pragmatism is our kryptonite, and the bastards know it.

The hungover is cruel – last night, at Juna, everything was spinning, a haze of light and music, whiskey and beer. All of us, sparkling in our Diwali finest, the women slinky and shimmering, the men burnished by handsome kurtas.

‍
Everything blended together. A melange of faces and bodies – shouting, excited chatter, yelling. Vinay Lalwani appears, handing out tequila shots. Someone yells “did you fuck her!” and the tall guy next to me grins, “No, but she said my lips were soft.” 

Perhaps, he too, has an anxious attachment style, I want to reach out and condole – he’s only an arms length away, but that's light years at my current velocity.

In my sedated lucidity, a brainwave: “a support group for anxiously-attached men. We exist. We need each other.”‍

Here’s the ad copy:‍

Do you have a problem with putting women you just met on a pedestal? Well, you’re not alone. Sign up for this online course to understand:

- that she’s not coming back

- that you’re the architect of your own sufferin

- that there are others, just like you!

‍