Pass the ball - camarado!

Football 17 Nov 06, originally uploaded by Asha Mokashi.

UT and I started a football team some months ago. We play in the playground next door - in between all those people playing cricket. Very often we don't get space, or they build a pandal there, or it rains, but when we do play - we have such fun!! And this way, I also get to know a lot of the new people.

Wrote this article for the Newsletter Sports section some time ago. The picture was taken today. Only 8 people came, so what, we made 2 teams and played! On the way back, washed our faces, and the ball, in the Cisco fountain!

Pass the ball - camarado!

It is 5 PM on a Friday evening, and time for the Football club to get together again. So stepping out of the air-conditioned, tube light-lit office, I go to reserve a place in the public playground, after sending mail to the group – "Come to play football NOW!"

September, as it leaves, is bringing in that beautiful clear winter sunlight which gives me a high nothing else can.

There is not enough space in the ground – already there are two cricket teams and two football teams, and also a huge tent being prepared for Dussehra celebrations. So we use the strategy we learned, and request the group of hesitant young college kids to play with us. They are not very well-off, they wear poor clothes, they look thin and under-nourished. No one has good shoes; in fact most of them are barefoot. The economic disparity between our teams is glaring.

They are still hesitating, even though we confessed that we are not exactly State–level players. The closest state we ever get to is Exhaustion, and that we reach without much effort. I leave Partha and Kiran to keep guard on the space and to exert silent psychological pressure as the boys still haven’t said Yes, and go to get the others. We haven’t played for many weeks due to the Dussehra pandal, and I am not in any mood to give in again.

We kick the ball around in the small narrow gap in between the football and cricket teams. The boys finally give in and agree to play with us, since we don’t show any signs of going away. Tenacity pays.

I am made goal-keeper. I am usually made goal-keeper because I am no good at playing. I know that I am no good, and everyone else knows it too, but since I am the catalyst, the one who gets it all going, I am held in fond respect, though there is much ragging as always. Who said young people aren't kind?!

The game starts. We have mixed the college kids with our team; they didn't have enough numbers, so it is not us against them. They are absolutely brilliant – agile, fast, impressively co-ordinated, untiring. We are completely wowed by them. Our boys too are good – and as always I am moved by how these normally serious sober youngsters, some of them so quiet and shy at office, are suddenly transformed into fired-up, passionate, intense people. It is a sight to watch. Just watching them, I know it was all worth it, starting this club, which everyone told me won't take off.

The scene is funny – in between our game, cricket balls come whooshing past, fielders come running backwards to catch them, a football comes in which is not ours and we kick it back. There is very little space, but no one minds really.
A bright yellow cricket ball soars up up into the sky – above the shadow of the huge 8 floor Divyasree building, it catches the last rays of the setting sun – and glows for a brief glorious second.

I don't know most of the rules of the game. I don't ever watch football; I didn't even see the World Cup. Like all sports, I'd rather play the game than watch it.
The amazing footwork of the boys fascinates me as always. Each time, I think – oh, this is so much like dance, what grace. And all the while, even with the limited movement of a goal-keeper, my shoelaces somehow keep getting undone.

One of the boys in the other team is standing near me, holding his tummy, he is exhausted. He is new to office; I don't even know his name. I smile at him. He says he hasn't played in 11 years. I tell him I haven't played in 28! We introduce ourselves, he is Khanjan.

In between some go off to answer mobile phones, in the other team people have taken turns being goal-keeper – whoever gets tired becomes goal-keeper, is our rule. The light is fading, but we don't want to stop. After the initial slips, I am learning to become a reasonably good goal-keeper, and everyone cheers when I manage to keep well, even the opposite team. Like Siddharth, who comes over to shake my hand after I nearly crush it catching the ball coming at me at full speed. I am proud when I fall down, because I saved our team. I am 10 years old again.

At 6.30 it is almost dark, and we stop. Towards the end, we were so admiring the little kids, we forgot to count the goals. We all won, we all had such a good time. I shake hands with the kids and tell them they are superb players. They must've found this really weird – I was the only woman playing in the entire playground – and definitely the oldest. It strikes me that I am old enough to be the mother of some of them, though I am small and have weird Calvin hair.

We walk back to the office in the dimming light. Above us the huge rain-trees have closed their leaves and gone to sleep, the crows are back in their nests. As we climb back up the stairs when everyone else is going home, I think – this is the way the week should end, this is the way the weekend should begin. Under the blue blue sky, camaraderie takes on a different meaning altogether. I remember Walt Whitman, beloved friend, who had the right words for everything:

"I think heroic deeds were all conceiv'd in the open air, and all great poems also;
I think I could stop here myself, and do miracles............................*"

Song of the Open Road