Grail Quest

ONE day in early 1998, when I was busy pretending to study for the SPM examinations, my father arrived home and announced he had tickets to the World Cup. This caused mass delirium in the Raj household, the solitary exception being my brother, who decided that he was going to be too occupied with PMR to go to France.

Inspired by his sensible outlook, and demonstrating the foresight and sound judgment that has led to more than one of these columns being hurriedly completed on the back of a napkin three minutes before deadline, I declared my candidacy for the spare ticket with some measure of aplomb. And that is how, in the middle of the year, we found ourselves on our way to Paris.