United by the football frenzy

I recently read the autobiography of legendary footballer Pele. His family faced hard times. Even as a child, he wanted to do his bit for the family. He frequented his neighbourhood with a shoe-shining kit. However, he got few customers as most of the residents did not wear shoes. Pele asked his mother to let him go to the Bauru Athletic Club stadium on match days for polishing shoes, and there he earned a little money.

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He played football in the courtyard or the street with friends. They used to stuff a sock with paper or rags and shape it into a ball to play with it. He formed a football club and was keen to procure a ball as well as a kit. One of his teammates suggested collecting scrap in the streets and selling it. This did not yield a worthwhile result as there were already many scrap dealers around. Another mate suggested selling peanuts at the circus and the cinema. They stole peanuts from train wagons, roasted them and made a small sum of money from their first adventure. The earnings were just enough to buy shirts and shorts, but not socks and boots. Their second attempt to steal peanuts failed, and the club played its first match without boots. The players came to be known as the ‘shoeless ones’.

The fascinating story reminded me of my teenage years. We had our village football team in the 1970s. There used to be many Chakotra (pomelo) trees in Dehradun. Mostly, we used to play football using the Chakotra fruit as a ball as we had no resources to purchase the real thing. And our bare feet used to hurt a lot after every match.

During one summer vacation, we decided to earn money through sericulture to buy a football and a kit. We approached the sericulture department. The officials appreciated our initiative and assured us of support and guidance. Thus, we got silkworms from the department in a rectangular bamboo tray and fed them mulberry leaves. Initially, they ate very little and we did not face any problem. However, day by day, the size of the caterpillars kept growing. The number of trays increased accordingly, and the consumption of the leaves also grew in that proportion. We found it difficult to cope with their appetite, but the yearning for a football kept us going. We collected leaves from far-flung areas on bicycles. It was a great relief after about 21 days when the caterpillars stopped eating the leaves and began to spin cocoons.

The department bought the cocoons and paid us accordingly. We were on cloud nine. We purchased a football and a kit for the team and thereafter participated in several local tournaments. Decades have rolled by, but we vividly and fondly remember the day our hard work paid off and we finally got what we had so desperately wanted.