Cockroaches watch football

Walk into my matchbox anytime after 10.30 on weeknights and you'll hear strains of a medley of item songs. Push open the door and a mind-numbing mix of Sheila, Munni and Jalebibai will tear your ears out. Either that or Tamil films dubbed in Hindi. The television isn't used to quality fare.

So while two cockroaches stare at the violence on screen silently night after night, number three prefers taking his world out into the lobby, where the sounds are only slightly muffled by the earphones. The rare occasion when I need, you got that right, need to watch something is almost always on weekends when Tottenham Hotspur are playing an important, season-defining game.

While the cockroaches aren't exactly the telly's masters, it still is a task to get them to switch from MH One to ESPN. Football is alien to the matchbox, in fact it never played there before I came in. But all the glory of causing a mini revolution was lost when I realised it's impossible to enjoy a quiet match, cuss to my heart's content and whoop and dance at the sight of victory.

Tottenham are playing a stellar season, and I was looking forward to Saturday's match against Manchester City, which I eventually did.

Ideally I preferred to watch it at a restaurant nearby called Rasoi, but they hadn't subscribed to ESPN so I had no choice but return to the matchbox and interrupt the historic 15666667^th screening the Rajnikanth's Sivaji – The Boss. In Hindi. They grudgingly flicked to ESPN where the game was scoreless after 30 minutes played.

What I needed was for them to play a silent audience. What I got instead was two old cockroaches talking about their childhood and their respective disaster stories while attempting to play football. I wish they'd taken it somewhere else because the most boring first half in the history of the league was already testing my patience. Get a load of this, an excited Manipur pipes up five minutes into the telecast, “Aaj toh idhar football hi dekhenge!” (We're only going to watch football today). Yes man, I really appreciate that you granted me permission to exercise my right.

For some reason, they decided to side with City and cheered loudly when they scored two early goals. “Blue team bohot badhiya khel rahi hai yaar,” (Shitty are playing really well) observed Vivek. I'm very superstitious when it comes to football and it's very tempting to blame the senseless chatter of the cockroaches for Tottenham's last-second defeat but I can't muster the heart.

The game ended in scandal and had I been home I'd be tearing paper and beating up the TV, swearing at the top of my voice and throwing darts at the screen, things I couldn't do here. The game ended 3-2 to Manchester City and with me looking for someone or something to pound. Sure I blogged about it later and got it all out safely, but I'll always remember January 21 as the day three cockroaches watched football in a matchbox.