It was a book that got the beast back. When one part of you is still obsessing with whether you were only imagining your dead dog coming back to life, or whether he was actually there and speaking to you, this was definitely not a book to take to bed.

Or maybe – not that implausible – the Goan side of me allowed itself to be provoked by my grandfather Camillo’s clock, beginning the chimes for midnight. Every night – except on days I forget to wind it – Camillo’s clock chimes twelve times at the midnight hour. It’s always ominous, that it is announcing some big event.

This time it brought the book to life in my head, and caught me with ‘mind’ things – in this case, the so-called “age of enlightenment”, with historical details merging with murders and intrigue that were indelibly inked with religion – in this case, the Protestants giving it to the Catholics and the Catholics giving it to them right back. This terrible book grabbed me viscerally – the author throwing a simple fact, that a girl was soon to be hanged and quartered (and a part of her duly sacrificed in the interests of the emerging science of medicine), and seemed already condemned by two of the male narrators I’ve met so far, both of whom who have known her, both of whom have used her, both of whom seem happy to embrace a marriage of skulduggery with religion.

Bad book to read, definitely not one to synch with sheep jumping over stiles, or oriental breathing techniques or fruit-flavoured herbal tea or whatever. This is a book that will make me sleepless all the way till the day after tomorrow night! Seriously, to chase away the sleep you fast forward to times closer and see in HD, two football teams locked in battle with the thumping of drums.

Not that far from the Oxford in the novel I’m reading, we just move to Scotland, and step from the ‘age of enlightenment’ to the ‘age of sleeplessness’. The score reads – Celtic 2, Rangers 2 – and neither side stepping back. No defensive football like Jose Mourinho, this is war.  Nice Sunday morning like this I bet you didn’t know that the green-and-white hoops of Celtic were Roman Catholic, the dark blue of Rangers, Protestant? Or that it took guts to break this divide? Or that it’s a problem that persists?

And anyway, don’t forget the real story. How will it be different if I switch on the TV? What are the possibilities I’ll get to see the post-midnight news and catch a re-run of a clip showing me marauders from “one community” pouncing on men and women from “another community” and blissfully hacking them to death?

Yeah, exactly, who needs ‘mind’ problems before going to bed…as if one has no problems of one’s own…

The wife is fast asleep. Another five minutes, she’ll be snoring. I’m reminded of my dad’s snoring, loud enough to frighten Phimbo, his dog, under the bed. My mother was close to a breakdown. She had had enough. She called me down from my bedroom. Watch, she told me, showing me a bit of Colgate on her finger which she dropped into his mouth. The old man’s mouth moved, he licked them, tasted the toothpaste, liked it. Till I finished college, he ate a lot of toothpaste but slept like a baby and never snored.

I try that with the wife, I’ll be in more trouble. I’m wondering whether I should creep to the shelf, get another book out. Make sure I read one where I know the ending. Maybe that crazy woman who has a thing about snow. Or maybe that guy whose parents were jazz musicians, I could read the book and see William Hurt doing it in the right accent. No, won’t do. If reading was out, then no internet either, so that meant it also ruled out sorting out a jammed in-box and facilitating my return to being sociable.

This called for emergency measures. This called for creeping out of bed and going back to the TV. I think of my daughter’s advice – a terse email telling me that I have to make myself more useful in the house to make sure I continue to be welcome. There’s more to life in an urban environment than old books and potted plants, she tells her old, angst-ridden father, her mother may respond better to food.

Good idea, I say to myself, I’ll watch a food programme, surf the channels till I find one that’s got sexy vegetarian food. Stop being a carnivore the environmentally conscious women of the house tell me, grow up, change your paradigm.

Who’s going to eat the beef, I glumly wonder.

I walk to the kitchen like it’s seven in the morning and not just one, and get organised; make a pot of tea, butter hot toast and smear the slices liberally with WIT’s three-fruit marmalade. I get ready in front of the TV even as I think that the wife and the brats may have a point. That I need to cut sugar, it’s making me too edgy…

*********

The TV’s not even on for five minutes and I choke on my toast. I hack and haw till it feels like I’ve coughed my lungs the other side of the room, into the passion-fruit creeper that’s on the window sill. The pot shakes, the leaves tremble.

It was the dog that did this. He was right there, at my feet. I wasn’t imagining it, even as I coughed and choked, I could see Koko getting back to his feet, stretching, moaning, then skipping to the divan, taking his once appointed space with the three cushions to recline on. He was actually speaking. I could hear him.

“Could you change the channel?” is what he asked me. He did have a voice like Eddie Murphy’s, the same lower registers, the same mad glint in his eye and a low laugh like a smoothly rumbling riff. Koko always gave me the feeling he was just about to actually speak for me so I could realise he was more than just a dog. Like Eddie, he needed the chance to talk.

But – and this was a big ‘but’ – it ought to have opened my eyes to what was in store  – he had an accent that was very similar to someone I had heard.  I had met Chima before, once when he played in the Rover’s Cup in Mumbai, another time when he played at the Durand Cup in Delhi, so yes, it was a Nigerian  accent, but not Chima – he was too baritone, this dog’s voice was closer to Eddie…

“Hey, change the channels, I want to watch football,” Koko said. He seemed irritated. “I got the urge to watch a good match, man, I’m in a bad mood…”

“You’re speaking…” I squeak.

“Yeah, man, I am, I’m a dog with a mission.” I steal a glance at the back to see whether the wife has come to see who’s talking past midnight. “Hey don’t worry man, she’s not going to come here, this is just you and me, male bonding time man, you know, you just be cool…now put the football on…”

“You have a Nigerian accent,” I tell him, still amazed.

“Nah, I’m a Pan-African dog.”

“You speak like a guy called Fela Anikulapo Kuti,” I told him.

“Yeah, man,” Koko replies, “Fela’s my man, yeah he’s my man, I liked his politics…now put on the football I want, what is this junk you’ve got on?”

“A programme, I need to learn how to cook…”

“Why?”

“Got to get into the wife’s good books…”

“We’ll get to cooking some other time, I’ve some ideas, but right now, change it, get the football, I need football. The draw for Russia 2018 has been made and…hey, hold it, hold it, WTF is this…?”

“It’s the English Football League…”

“Rubbish. Change it…wait a minute, what’s this?”

“Bundesliga…”

“Change…”

“La Liga…”

“Change…”

“Serie A…”

“Change…wait a minute…yuck, what is this…??”

“It’s the ISL, our very own Indian League…modelled on the English Premier League…”

“CHANGE IT…It’s terrible, the worst of the lot! Man, I have a lot of things to tell about football in your country…you guys are totally colonised, put the TV off…”

“You wanted to watch football,” I reminded him.

“I did, but this ISL is not football man, us dogs do better stuff, and you should know better, and Koko is an Pan-African Hound, and I’ve come back thanks to this rubbish you write about your plants and books and what not – basically, you are unemployable. I am not like you, I have a mission…”

I had had enough. Sleep seemed welcome. I was imagining the dog. He didn’t have a voice like Eddie Murphy and his accent was not like Fela’s.

“What mission in life?” I still asked, in spite of myself.

“The decolonisation of football,” he said, getting to his feet and dusting himself. “I’m off – you remember that cool chick with the bushy tail? I got an early morning ramble with her to check the scene – but I’ll be back man – you saw the draw for the 2018 World Cup? – I got to tell you that I have a feeling the cup is going to Africa. Of all the teams from Africa, I think Nigeria are favourites to win the World Cup!”

“Nigeria!?!”

“Nigeria!! You Indians made a big thing about holding the Under-17 World Cup. You lost all your matches, you’ll didn’t get a chance to even hold the cup  man… Nigeria was different man, and Nigeria is going to win the cup! Russia 2018 is Nigeria’s year…

Next week: A Pan-African oracle speaks…

(Hartman de Souza is a senior citizen with lots of problems in his life, from coping with a wife who comes close to booting him out of the house every third day to ignoring two children trying to pack him off to an old age home.

To compound matters, he is responsible for the health of thirty potted plants of all shapes and sizes, stuck with several shelves of books, a quasi-flat screen with too many channels, a temperamental lap-top, a kitchen that he obsesses over and a resurrected African hound with a passion for football who visits him at will.)