The most enduring love affair of my life started in 1990 and almost felt to have come full circle this early morning. If the waiting and longing was almost as long as your adult life – saturated with highs and lows and everything in between in such an intensity that rendered Hope itself distorted despair – then when the moment finally came, I was a bit at a profound loss as if it’s not true.

Time is the greatest magician – I’ve sublimated all my raw energies into a fumbled pursuit of what I only later learned was ignited in that magic summer. That contingent but electrifying touch of my biological core proved to be vital, undoing what I had been. Look at me now.

You can only speak of what you love lightly – just like this 16-year overdue kiss Lionel Messi placed on the Jules Rimet trophy – so destined yet the tenderest.