Sunanda K Datta-Ray: Foot in the goalmouth

The project to remould street children can do without Kolkata cops and politicians

Watching Jeremy Browne, Britain’s strapping young junior minister for foreign and Commonwealth affairs, kick four footballs and autograph each in a Kolkata slum, I wondered if the British Council’s true purpose in organising the event was to rehabilitate wayward youth or reform errant policemen. Neither perhaps. Perhaps Goalz, the project partnered by Kolkata police, the municipal corporation and six football clubs, is intended to teach Trinamool Congress politicians punctuality and politeness.

The inspiration for Goalz is Britain’s equally eccentrically spelt Kickz through which policemen engage delinquents, present and potential, from the toughest areas. The British obviously – and commendably – take Goalz seriously for the British Council chiefs from London and Delhi flew in for a 40-minute event down a scruffy lane winding through bustees. That’s besides Sanjay Wadwani, Britain’s ethnically innovative rugger-playing deputy high commissioner in Kolkata, and a man with a bulging briefcase trailing the minister. Goalz is a wonderful idea to rescue youths from the twilight zone of crime and politics and keep them mentally and physically alert.

 

This isn’t the first football theme Kolkata has picked up from Britain. Over 30 years ago, Rudraprasad Sengupta deftly adapted Peter Terson’s play, Zigger Zagger, so that instead of projecting football hooligans and their pursuit of drink, sex and trouble, Nandikar’s Football dramatised the game’s magic grip on adolescent minds. It still enthralls packed houses.

Kolkata may not be quite India’s sports capital, as Browne put it. But the legendary goalie, Goshto Pal, frozen in stone on the Maidan, recalls a heady July afternoon in the high noon of empire when barefoot Bengali lads in Mohun Bagan (a Goalz sponsor) colours humbled booted soldiers of Britain’s East Yorks regiment. As the victory procession stomped through the streets of India’s then capital, fans urged the players to storm Fort William.

Football nationalism is also a British import. England-Scotland matches still resonate to “Flower of Scotland,” celebrating the 14th century Scottish victory over England at Bannockburn.

However, Baichung Bhutia’s engagement with Bury F C in 1999 also confirmed that football’s free-for-all knows no borders. I thought Michael Nyarko at Browne’s kick-off was like Mohun Bagan’s Nigerian Okori Cheema until he opened his mouth. He’s pure London, Crystal Palace in fact. Michael and Rubel Ahmed, whose Bangladeshi origins are also lost in his London persona, are training 10 Indian coaches to give disadvantaged Kolkata teenagers (12-18) three games a week.

I am not quite sure of the police role in this worthy project to remould street children into responsible citizens. Dapper in a business executive’s natty blue suit, Ranjit Kumar Pachnanda, who became police commissioner in March at the Election Commission’s behest, speaks of football and friendship. We may not know it, but the glossy magazine he gave the VIPs spoke of the force’s benevolence. It was aptly called Protector.

But Kolkata cops can’t do much protecting if they can’t climb a five-foot wall to save a family from robbers because their trousers are too tight (bellies also too bulging?), as was reported recently. Maybe, their job is not to kick a ball but to kick youngsters with “Goalz or else …” threats to the pilot project’s six chosen sites.

The politicians’ part is also problematic. The veteran coach who was heard muttering “We should first learn punctuality from the British before thinking of turning Calcutta into London” must have had in mind Mayor Sovan Chatterjee and Sports Minister Madan Mitra who ambled in unconcerned well after the ceremony was over and Browne had left to catch his plane. Industries Minister Partha Chatterjee didn’t show up at all. Neither did Mamata Banerjee though the Press Trust of India announced she would launch the project.

Perhaps the chief minister took fright at Mitra’s proposal to “achieve peace in the troubled Jangalmahal area through football”. A Trinamul vs. Maoist fixture? Doesn’t sound all that friendly. Trinamool vs. CPI(M)? Outright war.

Sujata Sen, the Council’s East India director who organised the launch, says Kickz has brought down the crime rate in England by 60 per cent. “We hope to achieve something similar here.” Amen to that. But the British Council may have to do it with only the football clubs, without police or politicians.

Tailpiece: As the police contingent stumbled and shambled past, pot-bellies quivering, in a Republic Day parade, a crowd of little boys began chanting, “Chawanni! Chawanni!” Why chawanni? “Because they demand chawanni – four annas – all the time!” Inflation must have pushed up the rate long before the humble chawanni was banished but the nickname sticks.

sunandadr@yahoo.co.in