“Are you sure that is a good idea? Have you considered the problems you will have on the weekends? There will be a lot of anti-social behaviour after matches."

This was the highly sceptical response I got from most people when I told them, in November 2010, that the missus and I had decided to rent a flat right outside the Emirates Stadium, home of the legendary Arsenal Football Club.

We paid no regard whatsoever to such scepticism. Scepticism is easy. Renting a flat in London is hard. Not that there aren’t enough flats in this great city. There are many. It is impossible to stand anywhere in London with your eyes open and not see the frontage of at least one lettings agency in your field of vision. With their windows displaying dense checkerboards of fraudulent photographs of tiny flats, all shot with wide-angle lenses.

The problem is not finding a flat but finding one that is both affordable and… decent. And not even completely decent. The missus and I didn’t make enough money to be uncompromising about the way we lived. So we were prepared to make trade-offs. Small kitchen was OK if living room was spacious. Low ceiling was OK if windows were big. Small bathroom was OK as long as it had been refurbished at some point since Arsenal last won the league. (Sigh.)

So we spent weeks looking at ridiculous flats all over London, our spirit diminishing one viewing at a time. All along, though, we had a slight preference for flats in or around Islington in North London. That is because my brother-in-law, who had moved to London several years before us, at the time rented a flat inside Arsenal’s old Highbury stadium.

When you move to a new city, leave alone a new country, it is always comforting to live close to family. Somebody who can tell you how self-checkout machines work, where you can buy fresh curry leaves, restrain you at IKEA and console you when you realize how much a good TV subscription and internet connection costs.

My brother-in-law’s flat was great. The whole Highbury complex was superb. While it still looked like the old stadium from the outside, and there are always fans outside taking pictures, inside there were manicured gardens, minimalist fountains and modern little apartments with floor-to-ceiling windows. Not one of these flats could we afford to rent.

Finally, just as we were giving up hope and preparing to live out of suitcases at Heathrow Airport, we found and finalized a small one-bedroom apartment overlooking the Emirates. (We later found out that the flat belonged to a very gentle and soft-spoken family of Singaporean Tamils who had purchased it as some sort of investment without ever having visited it. Many months later they suddenly dropped in and were pleased to note that one of the tenants was a Malayali boy.)

The interesting thing about all this was that none of us were Arsenal fans. Not my brother-in-law who lived in Highbury, not the Singaporeans who owned our flat, nor the missus and I who lived in it. All we cared for, as we moved into the flat on a weekend and began to assemble flat-pack furniture, was the possibility that our weekends could be ruined by boisterous fans coming and going to and from the stadium.

Besides that we didn’t particularly care for what transpired in that stadium, that sleek assemblage of glass and steel I could see out of my window each morning, glistening in the sun like a parked alien mothership.

And then all that began to change.

***

It began with taxi drivers, plumbers and electricians asking me what I thought of Van Persie or Arsène Wenger or Lukas Podolski. I had no idea what a chamakh or a podolski was. But I am an Indian journalist who used to be a management consultant. I just made stuff up.

Plumber: “That FA Cup final must have been hard for you, eh?"

Me: “Well cups will come and cups will go…"

Plumber: “Not for me mate. I am a Leicester City fan…we win nothing..."

But eventually I stopped making things up. Instead, Arsenal started leeching into my system. I began to occasionally check the scores on TV. Sometimes I would be working at my desk when a thunderous roar would emanate from the chrome-steel cauldron, across the railway tracks and in through my window. I would get up and run to the living room to check the score. A loud roar was usually good news. A muffled roar was usually not.

On the tube somebody would talk about how Per Mertesacker had the turning speed of an oil tanker. I would run back home and Google up this Mertesacker character.

Weekends, meanwhile, became occasions not for caution but celebration. On match days the entire neighbourhood transformed into a street market full of great food, Arsenal memorabilia shops, mounted police joking with fans and away fans lingering around nervously.

Old English ladies ran burger stands and asked me “What do you want love?" or “What can I get you my darling?" and I blushed and I blushed. Further up Drayton Park, a Korean lady stood over a giant wok of the most fragrant meat and sold Korean bulgogi baguettes.

It was all very much like an English version of the church festivals or temple poorams that I went to back in Kerala. The religion here was football, but this faith manifested itself in remarkably similar ways.

Devotees and the Arsenal-curious thronged in groups, trying to allay their pre-match tensions with good food, drink and banter. The faithful proselytized the doubtful. The annoyed doubtful maintained a respectful silence. Meanwhile, hawkers hawked relics and icons of the saints: Charlie George, Ian Wright, Dennis Bergkamp, Wenger.

And just like the feast and festivals of Thrissur and Irinjalakuda and Guruvayoor, crowds surged towards the temple gates in boisterous good cheer. Until there was a reverential hush, a moment of silent prayer, as they found their seats, sat down, took it all in and, after a moment of gratitude to the powers that be, they began taking selfies.

***

Day by day, weekend by weekend, baguette by baguette, Arsenal began to seep into my being. And then I made the fatal error. I began to care. And then I made things worse. I bought a cap and a scarf. And then I crossed the point of no return: I went to see a match. In January 2013, I witnessed an FA Cup third round replay between Arsenal and Swansea that was settled by a sublime Jack Wilshere goal.

The next 12 months were spent in a rigorous year-long self-imposed initiation into Arsenal fandom. I read the books, memorized the chants, subscribed to the blogs, downloaded the podcasts, bought the jacket and became a Red Member—the lowest tier in club membership. (Since then, I have spent an obscene sum of money on match tickets. There is no need to linger on that.)

In December of 2013 my daughter was born and the first thing she wore after the nurses tidied her up was an Arsenal onesie. Not one person in my family rolled their eyes at this. Everybody understood.

When Arsenal won the FA Cup in May 2014, their first piece of silverware in nine years, I stepped out into the balcony of my brother-in-law’s flat in Highbury and screamed into the air. It seemed appropriate. And I was not alone. Even the missus, who refuses to watch football in anything longer than GIF form, had a sheen of moist in her eyes as we jumped up and down, risking our hamstrings.

***

People often ask me why I support Arsenal football club or follow the English Premier League so closely. Not because of the club—and god knows it is a confounding bloody club—or the league, but because of who I am: a middle-aged Indian man who once used to write ghastly cricket humour for Cricinfo.

I don’t know what to say when they ask me this. But then on the other hand I have so many reasons. This is a club with a great, great history. It plays wonderful football when it wants to. It has some great players. And it has warm, welcoming fans who not for one moment have let me feel that I am an unwanted newbie. It has a manager who seems a good, decent man for all his flaws.

But then it is also a club that infuriates with clockwork regularity. That builds castles in the air and then tears them down before the air-mortar has cured. That packs more heartbreak and elation and magic and catastrophe into a single half of a football match than an entire Hrishikesh Mukherjee box set. (Perhaps this is why Arsenal has so many Indian fans. Bollywood has prepared us well for the agony we voluntarily undergo every season.)

So why do I support AFC? Because that is what living next to the stadium does to you. The club and the culture and the community seeps into you like some sort of infernal osmosis. Suddenly the weekends are you when you get stressed and the weekdays seem like a welcome respite from the tiki-taka and the what-the-heck-a.

I love Arsenal.

Also I hate Arsenal.

(But I love Arsenal.)

Letter From... is Mint on Sunday’s antidote to boring editor’s columns. Each week, one of our editors—Sidin Vadukut in London and Arun Janardhan in Mumbai—will send dispatches on places, people and institutions that are worth ruminating about on the weekend.

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