Soumya walks down the memory lane. He tells us of his younger days, a time when he captained a locality football team. What happened under his maiden captaincy? An exclusive for Different Truths.

My father was an excellent athlete, a university blue in three sports, but he really excelled in football. He had captained his university to win the Lady Hardinge shield, and the cutting of the newspaper photographs were proudly displayed in my grandfather’s home, and now framed hang on my walls.

He was probably disappointed that I didn’t follow in his footsteps. I was an enthusiastic but average player in most sports but loved football the most.

Star Brothers

My brothers were respectively a star student and a star musician, and my parents were proud of them, but I wasn’t remarkable in anything, so they were probably disappointed. I used to write even then, and tried to be the class comedian, but that wasn’t a desirable quality.

We played in Vivekananda Park, and our team was very egalitarian. We had kids from nearby slums, child labour in neighborhood shops and domestic servants in the team along with middle-class kids, love for football being the cementing factor.

We had won a few friendly matches against local clubs and decided in sudden confidence to enter a tournament.

This involved paperwork and talking to people and being known as a literary boy fluent in English, I was chosen the captain. 

There were frequent meetings in my room after the game where we planned teams and strategies.

Father Overheard

I didn’t know that my father had overheard this and was proud of the fact that I was a captain and had secretly decided to attend the event.

Before our first match even began, we were totally impressed by the opponents coming in uniforms and boots with a coach who had a whistle and had already lost the game in our minds.

We were a ragtag team who played in shorts and shirts or vests or bare bodied and either barefoot or in Bata keds.

The nervousness showed and we were totally routed.

I was a right wing, but I went down to defence and finally benched myself and put in a substitute.

Returned Dejected

We were knocked out in the first round by this professional looking team, and I returned dejected after shaking the victorious captain’s hand

Unknown to me my father had returned earlier from work, had parked his car alongside our grounds and was watching the game sitting in the car.

He had come with a lot of expectations and was thoroughly disappointed by our show

When I came home later, after the useless analysis of what went wrong and blaming each other, the referee and luck, I was surprised to find my father at home.

He looked at me with the looks I usually got when showing him my report cards, and said, “If you can’t play, don’t. Why do you make a spectacle of yourself?”

That was the last day I ever played football!

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Soumya Mukherjee

Soumya Mukherjee is an alumnus of St Stephens College and Delhi School of Economics. He earns his daily bread by working for a PSU Insurance company, and lectures for peanuts. His other passions, family, friends, films, travel, food, trekking, wildlife, music, theater, and occasionally, writing. He has been published in many national newspapers of repute. He has published his first novel, Memories, a novella, hopefully, the first of his many books. He blogs as well.

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