‘Sir, Khodu.’
‘Yes, Khodu. I saw you pass inside. Don’t repeat that mistake. Always outside. And one tip for the entire team: The ground is sticky and muddy. To move the ball, scoop it. See what Rahul is doing. He is doing perfectly. Scoop and move, okay?’
‘Siiiiirrrr,’ came a trembling voice.
‘Yes?’ asked the coach.
‘Sir,’ said Vade, the owner of the trembling voice, ‘th-there is a d-d-dog here.’
Vade’s face was ashen and he had frozen in his place. Beside him stood the white dog that Dutta had been petting. The dog was sniffing Vade’s shorts and merrily wagging his tail.
Mehfouz Noorani sighed. The boys of today are girls, he thought. ‘Someone move that dog out,’ he ordered.
‘Yes, sir,’ said Rana as he grabbed Vade by the collar and began dragging him away, saying, ‘Shoo, shoo!’
The boys cackled, but the coach failed to find Rana’s excellent joke funny. His eyes bulged. His moustache grew angry. This was possible because the coach’s mehendi-dyed orange moustache had a personality of its own and, in time, the boys would be able to recognize its many moods. They saw it spray its bristles like the quills of a porcupine.
‘Aye!’ he yelled with a violence that didn’t seem compatible with his lanky frame. ‘AYE! How dare you! What do you think is going on? Fucking circus or what? If you don’t have discipline, then get out from here right now!’
He waited, expecting all of them to leave, but they stood rooted with downcast eyes.
‘Any idiot can kick a ball. I don’t want footballers. I want champions. That means one thing and one thing only: discipline.’ This apoplectic diatribe went on for a while, with the coach touching on many crucial themes, such as:
Discipline
Discipline
Dealing with dogs like a man, without disrupting crucial team conversations
After his passionate monologue ended, the coach realized there wasn’t much time left for strategy and tactics. He chose instead to bolster the team’s confidence, which he had, just seconds before, demolished. His tone softened and his voice dropped. His moustache became more genial. He spoke about the sparks of talent that had shone through their ill-disciplined exterior. He said their game was commendable for a team as feral and un-coached as they were. It just meant that they had natural talent, a resource so rare that only God dished it out. And they had talent by the bagful. If only they applied themselves correctly, they would be practically unbeatable.
Slowly, word by word, the boys’ faces brightened. Like all good dictators, the coach had that rare ability to inspire confidence even after threatening genocide. He made football seem simple and victory a given. It was potent stuff, and they went into their warm-up with a disposition almost bordering on sunny.
As soon as Rishabh took to the field, he noticed three things about Gyan Vikas High School. First, every member of the opposition was positively microscopic. Their average height must have been just below five feet. They were as scrawny as they were short, and most of them looked like they hadn’t had a whole meal in many months. Second, they didn’t have a uniform. Instead, they had each donned a T-shirt sporting a different design but were unified by the colour red. With the shorts, they weren’t even colour-coordinated, each wearing whatever took his fancy. One boy had showed up in bright blue Bermuda shorts, complete with a palm-tree print and the word ‘aloha’ emblazoned down his right hip. And lastly, they spoke—a lot. Even before kick-off, they were constantly yapping. But it was a shrill, rapid-fire barking that the Sanghvites—strain their ears as they did—couldn’t understand, and it annoyed them.
At the toss, Puro towered over the Gyan Vikas High School captain. This was a first for him, and he felt awkward about the advantage. Yet again, though, he won the toss. The Vikas players seemed disheartened. Their screechy chattering reached a crescendo. Puro chose to kick off. The Vikas captain chose to switch sides. So the teams traded places.
‘Rishabh, Rahul! Kick off!’ shouted Puro.
The two boys jogged to the circle. The referee put the ball down.
‘On my whistle,’ announced the referee.
‘I’ll pass the ball, you play it back to Puro, I’ll make a run and—’ said Rahul.
Rishabh cut him off, ‘No, no, no!’
‘Why, what happened?’
‘I’ll play the ball. Last time I started it, and we won. It’s lucky.’
Rahul didn’t argue. There was no arguing with the ‘L’ word. Of all the supporters a team could have, fate was the best one.
As the match begins, something odd occurs. The rain, which has been falling at a polite patter, suddenly turns to an angry lashing. It shimmers across the ground in silvery sheets. It streams down Rishabh’s glasses as he wishes that they came with wipers. But he can see clearly that he was wrong about their opponents. They’re less shrinking marmots and more rabid, red-eyed rats.
Gyan Vikas High School comes at them harder and faster than the rain. They zip past the Sanghvi boys, squeaking and shrieking as they go. They even have the pluck to pick on Sanghvi’s larger lads. Their forward goes head first into a tackle with the powerful Khodu and squeezes past him with the ball at his feet. Their captain is the epicentre of their game. He’s a pinched-faced, spiky-haired roadrunner called Chotte. The Sanghvites know this because the Vikas players can’t stop shouting his name. ‘Chotte! Chotte!’ they holler, even when Chotte is nowhere near the ball.
Meanwhile, on the wing, Rishabh is up against one of the most infuriating defenders he’s ever played. The boy is so thin that a wristwatch could be his belt. He has a neat close-cropped haircut and wears his T-shirt tucked into his oversized pants. While he’s being marked, Rishabh can hear an endless sniffling from behind him. From time to time, he sees the boy running the back of his hand across his leaking nose. The boy brushes against Rishabh.
‘Don’t touch me with your snotty hands!’ shouts Rishabh, disgusted.
The boy doesn’t even acknowledge him. His eyes robotically follow the passage of play ahead.
‘. . . and eat something. I can hear your bones rattling.’
The boy sniffles but doesn’t look at Rishabh.
‘You’re deaf or what?’
The boy still doesn’t respond. A few moments later, the ball breaks into the right wing. Rishabh thunders towards it, waiting to shove his bamboo-shoot marker to the ground. The boy doesn’t come. Rishabh sees a blur pass him by from the corner of his eye. He looks up to find that his marker has already intercepted the ball and is coolly passing it to a teammate. Rishabh stops in his tracks. The boy jogs back to him.
‘All that fat is slowing you down,’ he says.
Gyan Vikas High School keeps the pressure on Sanghvi for the rest of the first half. Their passing is precise and their movement is too quick to contain. When Sanghvi does get the ball, they’re hesitant about what to do with it. They are a team that thrives on dominance and rhythm and are unable to find either. Puro yells, ‘Chin up, chin up!’ trying to raise their plummeting morale. At the touchline, Mehfouz is gesticulating more and more wildly.
That’s when Khodu tackles Chotte and retrieves the ball at the edge of his own D. He looks up and sees Floyd making a run, and passes the ball to him. Floyd, however, has no intention of making any such run. He’s panting from tracking back. He watches serenely as Khodu’s pass lands at many feet in front of him. Before he can even react, a Vikas player latches on to the ball and dodges into the D.
He gambols lamblike past Khodu. But Puro comes charging from his blind side and kicks the ball off him. The ball bobbles towards Dave. All he has to do is calmly scoop it up like a dutiful goalkeeper. Instead, he hacks the ball with his boot. The ball smashes squarely into Puro’s chest and ricochets towards a corner. A gasp escapes the Sanghvi players. The ball could have gone anywhere—and that includes the empty, open, ultra-wide Sanghvi goal.
Mercifully, the first half ended scoreless. The boys dreaded getting off
the field because they could see Mehfouz prowling the touchline like an unfed panther. Their fears weren’t unfounded for he exploded the minute they sat down.
‘Where’s that keeper?’ he growled.
Dave raised a shaky hand. A broth of bubbling rage was ready to spill out of the coach’s mouth. He was livid about Dave’s last-minute clumsiness, which could have cost them a goal.
‘You are the only player who can use his hands in a game called football!’ he said incredulously. ‘THEN WHY, MY FRIEND, ARE YOU NOT TAKING ADVANTAGE OF IT? Pick up the ball! Don’t be like a rain cloud that only rains. If you have lightning, use it!’
It was the first of many statements that made the boys crick their necks as they pondered it. They would soon realize that the new coach had a knack for making analogies that bungee-jumped from the cliff of meaning: they almost didn’t make sense but managed to survive through a single strand of interpretation.
Mehfouz then turned on Rishabh. ‘Aye! How are you playing? Not one time you have kept the ball. And if you lose the ball that’s fine, but at least try to get it back. Just standing there like a dadaji while another player runs off with it.’
But the core of the coach’s anger was reserved for Khodu. He bombarded Khodu with a volley of abuse. Over two games, Khodu had been the player who was most at fault. He huffed and puffed towards the end of the games. His sloppy passes compromised the team.
‘Right now, in the end, what you did? I told all the defenders to clear outside, then why you passed to the middle?’
‘Sir, Floyd was making a run,’ said Khodu.
‘Aye! Don’t give me bloody excuses. First of all, that boy was not even running. You don’t know your teammates or what? First time you’re playing together or what? Bloody hell!’ The coach glared at him. ‘Take your studs off. Who are the other centre backs?’
Dutta and Sumit raised their hands. The coach pointed at Sumit. ‘You get ready.’
Sumit hesitated. He had been present for two dozen games and played in only two. His experience suggested he was a much better substitute than he was a player. He had seen the havoc the Vikas players were causing and heard the fiery invective delivered to Khodu. Truth be told, he didn’t fancy doing a better job than the burly Khodu. If anything, he would be slower and even more misguided. Interpreting his fear as honesty, he cleared his throat and said, ‘Sir, I think you should pick Dutta. He’s better than me.’
The coach remained quiet for a long moment and then began chuckling. He was wondering if he had done the right thing by taking this job. In a twenty-five-year—and by all accounts—stellar career, Mehfouz Noorani had never once told a coach what to do. Maybe times weren’t what they used to be, he thought. If the boy didn’t want to play, there was little he could do about it.
‘Superb. One defender is overconfident and one is under-confident.’ He turned to Dutta. ‘You please be just right. Start stretching and warming up.’ The coach waited for Dutta to leave before continuing. ‘Does anyone know the difference between confidence and arrogance?’
Nobody said a word because everyone rightly recognized this to be a rhetorical question.
‘My coach Ramdin Sir used to tell us confidence means showing up and believing you’ll win. Arrogance is believing you’ll win because you showed up,’ answered the coach. ‘I can see it on your faces. You think this team is easy. That they are not tall, so they are weak. But they are not weak. They are efficient. And fast. Just like a mouse can scare an elephant, like that only, if you are not careful, they will beat you. What I had said in the start? Every game is a final. Every team needs respect. Don’t underestimate anybody. It will be a very costly mistake. Chalo, now, get ready!’
The boys returned to the field curiously and played the second half cautiously. Once they stopped taking their opponents for granted, they played with greater control. They tracked back diligently and attacked aggressively. Gyan Vikas High School was worthy of their respect as they continued to press for a win while preventing Rahul and Paras from even sniffing at a goal.
The rain eased as the half progressed, but the two teams grew more frantic. The game shaped into a midfield tussle, with chains of passes forming and breaking, probing and searching, thirsting for that definite thrust that would decide the match. None was to be found. The referee called time on the contest and pointed to the penalty spot.
Victory now lay beyond the gates of nerves and chance.
Penalties are an odd way to clinch a football match. It’s the process of dismantling a team sport into individual value. A player is never more in charge of his destiny and less in control of his nerves as during a penalty shoot-out. In the end, it is not a test of skill but of nerves.
The Vikas keeper knew this, for he bounced about the goal line, trying to faze Rahul. Puro had won the toss and elected to kick first. Rahul had stepped up to claim the first kick. In the stands, the other players, three unemployed locals, an alcoholic uncle and the dog were on their feet, craning and straining to see the shoot-out.
Rahul strode forward with the ball under his arm, his eyes trained on the ground beneath him, ignoring the antics of the Vikas keeper—who waved his arms about so wildly that it looked as if he were being attacked by an invisible swarm of bees. Rahul staggered three long steps back and waited with his hands on his hips. The referee blew the whistle. Rahul steadied himself and dispatched the ball with ease to the left of the keeper.
‘Yes!’ he howled, his voice ragged with relief.
Dave slouched between the sticks. His eyes bore into the Vikas player who stepped up with a laser stare, almost trying to scan the boy for signs of which way he would place the ball. Rishabh tried to deduce it too. The boy wore the number 9. He stood with his weight shifting from foot to foot. His left foot was angled to the left. Left, thought Rishabh, he’s going left.
The whistle was blown. The boy didn’t go left. He went with clobbering the ball. He pushed his shoe through it with such venom that it flew within an inch of Dave’s face. His hair was ruffled as the ball zoomed by. He gulped, realizing how close he had been to having his nose smashed. 1–1.
Next up was Puro, who sprang to the spot. He gathered some mud and made a little tee, on which he placed the ball. The Vikas keeper yo-yoed on the spot. The referee expelled air into the whistle. Puro nodded in acknowledgement and charged at the ball. He struck it neatly, and it whizzed into the lower-right corner of the goal, out of the keeper’s reach.
Now the team stood with arms interlocked across their shoulders and felt a collective nervousness course through the line as Dave took up his position.
Mehfouz yelled, ‘Hands wide!’
‘Come on, Dave!’ said Tejas.
Chotte stepped forward. He held a steady gaze and, when the time came to strike, coolly placed the ball into the top-right corner. Dave seemed paralysed. He hadn’t even hopped to prevent it. Instead, he’d gazed at it like an astronomer on seeing a shooting star go by—with curiosity and wonder.
Then a nervous Floyd stepped forward. He chewed on the cuticles of his right hand as he made his way to the spot. He stared at the ball as the Vikas keeper danced on the goal line. When the whistle was sounded, Floyd took a large gulp of air and hammered the ball into the top-right corner of the goal. 3–2.
Vikas’s number 8 stepped up to the spot. Dave crouched low, arms spread, eyes narrowed. The Vikas player licked his lips. This time Dave guessed correctly and dived left. The ball swung in his direction, but it was perfectly struck. It crashed into the left post and ricocheted into the net. The Vikas players clamoured from their huddle.
It was Rishabh’s turn. He had volunteered to take the fourth kick. Now he felt a trepidation he hadn’t felt when he had raised his hand. As he walked to the spot, he felt time had slowed down. He could see the drops of rain, individual and prism-like. In the goal, he saw the Vikas player bouncing the ball with both his hands. When he reached the spot, the keeper flung the ball at him. Rishabh caught it. There was a tremor
in his hands that he couldn’t control.
Be calm, he told himself. It’s all right.
‘Come on, Rishabh!’ shouted Puro from behind him. His voice rang out like gunfire. He could see the shuffling wall of his teammates from the corner of his eye. The referee put the whistle to his lips. He could feel the blood, hot and dizzyingly fluid, swilling through him. His ears were burning up. The keeper was now jumping, hollering and flapping his arms all at the same time. Pfffeeeet, came the sound.
Right! To the right, said Rishabh’s mind.
Done! said his feet.
Hold on a sec— went his heart.
His body moved forward and his foot connected at the right angle, but the kick had no power behind it. His foot caressed the ball like a gentle breeze. The ball bobbled ahead, skidded a bit and came to a halt three feet from the keeper, who giggled at the attempt. Cheers went up from the Vikas side, gasps escaped Sanghvi lips.
‘WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT!’ bellowed Puro from behind him.
Rishabh couldn’t believe it was over. There was a part of him that wanted to run up to the ball and knock it in. He could still score!
‘Leave,’ said a voice. He saw the referee glaring at him. He saw the stunned stands as he walked back to the team. He passed the coach in silence. No one said a word as he stood apart from the group. Not a hand on his shoulder, not a pat on his back, not a word. There was nothing anyone could say about a penalty that had hardly left the spot.
Vikas scored in their effort to pull ahead. 3–4. Now Tejas broke from the huddle to take the final kick. The pressure was on him to keep Sanghvi’s slim hopes alive. Breathing heavily, he placed the ball on the ground, and retreating with tiny steps, waited for the whistle. When it sounded, Tejas charged at the ball and struck it well. It made a long, beautiful arc above the goal and disappeared into a tree. Tejas had missed and how.
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