With the COVID-19 pandemic bringing sport to a standstill all over the world, we ask a fan - alright, not any old fan but our very own Anirudh "Multisport" Menon - how he coped on this first weekend without sport. And, presumably, Thalassery biryani.
SATURDAY
6.00 AM: Rise and shine, it is time for LeBron magic. Let's do this.
6.01 AM: Oh, worldwide pandemic lockdown alert. Hi!
6.05 AM: I have no idea why I woke up this early, and now, I simply cannot go back to sleep. With basketball in my mind, I go down a YouTube rabbit hole. It starts with nostalgia-driven clips of Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen...
8.00 AM: ...we are now at Dennis Rodman telling Kevin Hart how he became friends with Kim Jong Un.
10.00 AM: Sleep is still far, far, away. Especially since I have had a breakfast of chocos and milk. Judge me if you want, but nothing comforts like a sugar high. More Rodman-mania, then. Did you know the man once married himself? Yeah.
12.00 PM: What is there to life if there is no sport? Without someone throwing a ball into a hoop, or kicking it into a net or hitting it into a crowd? My moaning stops when my wife, er, politely, reminds me of what is at stake here.
3.00 PM: Our daily office con-call, a few laughs, a few words of admonishment/advice, and shift begins. I like working weekend shifts usually - it is like getting a seat at an all-you-can-eat sports buffet. This shift, though, is going to be about diet.
4.00 PM: The computer set up, mails read through, my hand goes to my left, into an imaginary desk drawer looking for a Table tennis racquet as I type into Slack 'round one, let's go?'. Sigh. Another grand weekend daily tradition that has come to a stop.
5.00 PM: I catch myself opening the Premier League app. It is a force of habit. 'Stop it.'
5.05 PM: There's nothing on the app, or any other sports app. 'Get a grip! Stop checking for scores!'
6.00 PM: A Facebook notification - has, has La Liga gone live? No. I had, though, forgotten a cousin's birthday. Thanks, Facebook.
6.01 PM: There's plenty of good reading out there, and I dig in. Re-reads mostly, but classics never get old. Sharda Ugra on Real Kashmir, Jayaditya Gupta on Sachin Tendulkar, Wright Thompson on Ichiro Suzuki. Quality.
8.00 PM: The silence is torture. It is a Saturday evening, how can there be no football?
8.01 PM: The reading continues -- Jarrod Kimber on AB de Villiers, Rob Smyth on Danish Dynamite, a new rabbit hole opens up.
12.00 AM: Ok, there is live chess in Yekaterinburg. No, seriously. I don't really look for a live stream but the mere fact that I consider doing it...
SUNDAY
6.00 AM: Nah, not doing this again. Let me kill that alarm, now.
10.00 AM: I wake up with a jolt. Wasn't Formula 1 supposed to take place at Bahrain this weekend - (near) our neck of the woods? I reach for my phone before my wife slaps my hand away. Ah, yes. Worldwide quarantine.
10.02 AM: I really ought to have got myself that PlayStation.
10.30 AM: The wife is doing her best to cheer me up. We are having homemade doughnuts for breakfast (way to level up in life, heh.). As we munch on them, neither of us can believe the rates they go for in India.
11.00 AM: I stumble onto a video I've been meaning to watch for a long time. It is titled 'Manchester United | All 2000 Premier League Goals | 1992/93 - 2019/20 | Ronaldo, Rooney, Cantona', and it is eight hours and fifty-five minutes long. Glorious.
12.00 PM: Bloody hell, Manchester United have scored a lot of goals.
1.00 PM: The video is put on pause; duty calls. We sift through the wreckage COVID-19 is leaving in its wake for glimmers of news, almost none of which are good.
3.00 PM: Hey, wasn't the All England Open still on this past week? Maybe there is some badminton on, you know -- one on one, smaller crowds. No? Ok. It is for the best, of course, if they sit at home and enjoy reruns of 'The Office'.
5.00 PM: I'm shaken out of my stupor by the clanging of steel-on-steel. Thank you; you brave people fighting this disease. Hope everyone stays inside to show their gratitude.
6.00 PM: What I would not give for a Super Sunday of Burnley v Watford right now. A Dyche v Pearson footballing classic. Or SPAL v Lecce. Or Hyderabad FC vs Mumbai City FC. Or Kerala v Delhi in the Santosh Trophy. Anything, really.
6.01 PM: The week that went by in a state of semi self-isolation was actually okay, but when weekend approached and brought with it no sport, that is when it truly hit home. We really are in trouble, aren't we?
7.00 PM: More great food, and the mind is distracted once more.
7.05 PM: I seek solace online once again. Videos of childhood sporting heroes are trawled through - Ronaldo (original, please), Michael Schumacher, Aravinda de Silva, Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. That's the stuff. Nostalgia opens up such a great escape hatch.
10.00 PM: I cannot believe I am looking forward to Monday. It is what it is, though. Unlike the weekend, the next five days throw up no great expectations of sport, of an alternate world where joy and anger and grief feel so real. My brain can handle that, sort of.
12.00 AM: STOP CHECKING FOR SCORES!