How football made it a winter of joy in Kashmir

Vinayak Padmadeo in Srinagar

Haris Gulrej is waiting near the media room, hoping to catch a glimpse of Real Kashmir FC’s Scottish coach David Robertson. The 14-year-old Gulrej, a Class XI student, is a budding full back with the Real Kashmir U-14 team. He had spotted the angry Scot briefly after the team crashed to a 0-1 loss against Kolkata giants East Bengal.

Despite the defeat, Gulrej, who also doubles as the team’s volunteer to manage the fans on match days, was backing his team to get back to winning ways. He believes the part-time association with the team is the best thing that has happened to him growing up. And obviously, he wants to graduate to wearing the first team jersey. But his family — his father, to be precise — want him to discontinue playing football and take up studies seriously as “that is the only way forward”, in their view.

“I want to play football, but they want me to concentrate on studies,” Gulrej said. When quizzed further on how he would make his family understand that football is his calling, he retorted: “I don’t know how.”

Suhail Ahmed, who originally hails from Gurez, some125km away from Srinagar, has a similar story to tell. “Football is lovely to watch. It is the getting big here,” he said.

All-round support

Lovely scenes have become a regular feature at the TRC Ground in Srinagar, the home turf of Real Kashmir. Not only are the young men back, enjoying a great game, women, kids and even young girls can be seen supporting their team and hooting the opposition.

The scenario was far from ideal when Robertson joined the team. Apart from the nondescript facilities, he recalled that the team comprising only Kashmiri players in 2017 showed up wearing Manchester United jerseys and jackets, and brought their own footballs. “There was no net in the goalposts. Then we had our first home game and I think there were only 200-odd people in the stadium and all were men. I remember asking Shamim (Shamim Meraj, co-owner): ‘It’s funny, why aren’t the women or kids here?’ He answered: ‘That’s the way things are here’.”

At that time, Lone Star Kashmir was the biggest football club of the state. Three years later, it’s RKFC and its famous Snow Leopard badge that rules the roost in this part of the world. As for attendance, the club is now forced to restrict entry of fans.

Robertson knew he had taken in more than a responsibility of managing this new club when around 20,000 came to watch them play Mohun Bagan.

“I know most came to the stadium to watch Churchill and not us. But then suddenly after that there was so much enthusiasm and passion for the club. I think in one of the games, think it was against Mohun Bagan, we had 20,000 people and they were hanging on the mosque, the buildings. You had never see anything like that,” he recalled.

“But now it doesn’t matter who we play. This season we had to restrict the crowd. The thing which is most pleasing is that suddenly now you see women, kids, grandparents, and the police all inside. It is like two hours of happiness. I don’t know whether it is an escape for them, but Srinagar is now a place full of happy people,” the Scot said.

New confidence

And this new confidence in the team has come to their rescue a number of times, most recently when the state was put under a lockdown in August last year. Several porters, fans of the team, helped out the Real Kashmir team, which was in a bind while trying to catch a flight to Kolkata to participate in the Durand Cup, only days before the abrogation of Article 370.

Many of the contingent, comprising foreign and domestic players plus the managing staff, had already reached Kalyani, near Howrah in Bengal. The Kashmiri boys and the administrative staff had to join the team a day later. But they were stopped by the airline staff as they had excess baggage of around 80kg. To their horror, they could not pay extra fees for it as the credit/debit cards were not working. But for a lucky call from co-owner Sandeep Chattoo, the team would have been stranded.

“I had left a day earlier. Now I was coordinating everything from Delhi. It is crazy, you can make a movie out of this! So they are at the airport, the flight is getting delayed because nothing is working,” Chattoo said. “There was only one phone number working at the airport, with Indigo Airline. I randomly dialled the number and asked about my team. They told me not to worry as all the porters and staff, who had the curfew passes that day, pooled in the money to pay the arrears (for excess baggage). So they boarded the flight. Of course we paid them back, but it has been crazy. Had that call not matured, they would not have boarded the flight,” the co-owner added.

On the funny side, Chattoo disclosed that he has lost 8kg while trying to manage the club amidst all the restrictions. “But all these hardships have brought us together.”

‘It is a brand now’

The Real Kashmir FC has covered a long journey in a space of three years. Now it has become a brand. Adidas has joined hands with the club and is selling club merchandise at select stores. It is a far cry from the times when the team had to make a 36-hours train journey to Pune for the play-offs or another 20-hour bus journey to Bengaluru for the all-important final match against Hindustan FC that they won 3-2 to earn promotion to the I-League.

The club is a brand now, and with it comes pressure: Coach Robertson

The pace of development has brought pressure as well. Coach David Robertson and team are thrilled that they have brought the smiles and passion out from the youth but then there is this constant pressure from the fans to win.

“See, no one expected us to win the Second Division. Again, no one expected us to finish third in our first I-League season but now suddenly there is pressure. People think you finished third, now you have got to do better than that. So I think it’s difficult for some of our players,” Robertson said. “I think we are getting a lot more respect from teams coming to play us here. I remember the first time we played TRAU this season, it was bit weird. That was the first game ever we were pegged as favourite to win. Even at home we found a bit of pressure. It is great to have crowd supporting you, but now we owe it to them a result. You saw what happened yesterday, the passion ran wild. It is a new team, with times you lose 2-3 games, you don’t know what will happen,” he added. Thankfully, the Scot says he has players in the team, including skipper Loveday Okechukwu and Bazie Armand, who just get on with the game. “We have got Loveday, Bazie who have played in the Indian leagues. They say once you put that badge on you it feels different,” Robertson said. “When you go to any restaurant you see these kids and families on their phones and they are not talking, but you come down here we have people talking. Even when there was no internet, even now they come down without their phones. So you get to know people well. When things go against us, the travel, the restrictions, it made us mentally tough. It brought us together.”

Srinagar, City of Peace

Plans are afoot to announce Srinagar as City for Peace and to hold a celebrity football match very soon, including the likes of Mesut Ozil of Arsenal and Paul Pogba, the World Cup winner for France. And Sandeep Chattoo is relishing this added responsibility. “I am more than just happy. This (running the club) is madness but it is alright. Kashmir has given me so much of love. There is this talk of Hindu, Muslim and Pandits but I have been here for 20 years. I owe something to them,” he said. “I have seen the youth suffer here. I have seen them misunderstood. I have seen them killed on the streets. But all that was because frustrations, wrongdoing of others. They needed a direction. I am not a messiah. But it was an experiment and it has proved right for me.”

“Did you hear any sloganeering? Did you find anybody who was there to create a mischief? They were just having fun, this is inspiration for them. They think ‘It’s OK, forget Article 370, statehood… This is football, enjoy’. This is what football can do,” Chattoo added. Chattoo says the next phase will be enormous. “What we are going to do is to first get Srinagar declared as a city of peace. Then we are going to get into community. We will form 3000 peace-leaders, mostly young children, who will go to kids in their locality and talk to them about football and make this group wider,” he said. “It is a huge thing but is doable. Ultimately it will come down to making small clubs and have matches like Indra Nagar vs Shivpora, identify the grounds nearby and give them football and let them play,” he added.