A game for the underdogs | Broadside

It's afternoon when the midday heat and a heavy lunch begins to bog you down. Archan makes frequent trips to his Texas office's break room to snatch glimpses of the World Cup games. Dinesh sits in his apartment in Washington watching the game on tv, volume turned high enough for the neighbour to complain about the buzzing of the vuvuzelas. Reshma goes to a sports bar in Georgia where a few soccer fans gather, sit around little tables, and drink. There's some cheering and shouting but mostly just quiet watching.

Football, or 'soccer' as the game is called in America, isn't much of a big deal, and World Cup fever is muted in comparison to what our families in Nepal call us up to talk about. Strangely, the World Cup doesn't seem as much of a world cup as it is when you are sitting in the living room with your extended family and shouting and cheering with every kick and pass and hit and miss. The once-in-four-years FIFA event is not just about the game, but about your uncle who jumps from the couch and does a dance when Argentina gets a goal in and your cousin brother who hits the cushion when Brazil misses and your sister who marches off when the referee gives her favourite player a red card and your aunt who gets miffed by the whole drama. It's about running through the streets of New Road so you can sit with strangers and watch the match al fresco on the big screen, eat chana and makai and scream and cheer as loudly as possible, believing that your shouting will somehow make a difference to the game's outcome. The World Cup is about your friends who have scheduled their day and yours (without letting you know until the last minute) around another match, when you scrimp and bet on your favourite teams and the only thing that you can talk about is football, football, and more football.
Somehow, sitting in a diner in a small Pennsylvanian college town with a pile of papers to be read doesn't cut it, even if they are showing the game on two large flat-screen tvs. A black lady sitting at a table moves closer to the counter above which a tv is fixed so she can drown out the loud laughter of beer-drinking truckers. Bill Clinton is chatting with Mick Jagger on tv and the American team is trying desperately to get a goal in. "This World Cup's for the underdogs," the lady says to me when I stand by the counter to pay my bill. "I'm American, originally from Ghana," she says, then shakes the ice in her glass, swearing under her breath, as USA makes an attempt to score a goal. The game isn't over yet but I must leave. I contemplate waking up early in the morning to watch the next match but decide against it. It's been a long day and there's much else that needs to be done. Maybe I'll watch the reruns.

Abha Eli Phoboo was the editor of WAVE from 2005-2006. She can be contacted at abhaeli[at]gmail.com.