Pass the ball, Camarado!

It is 5 PM on a Friday evening, and time for the office Football Club to get together again. So stepping out of the air-conditioned, cold-tubelight-lit office, I go to reserve a place in the public playground, after sending mail to the group – "Come to play football NOW!"

Outside, I notice that September, as it is leaving, is bringing in that beautiful clear winter sunlight - which gives me a high nothing else can.

There is not enough place in the ground – already there are 2 cricket teams and 2 football teams, and also a huge tent being prepared for Dussehra [Hindu festival] celebrations. So we use the strategy we've learned, and convince the group of hesitant young college kids to play a match with us. They are not very well-off, they wear poor clothes, they look thin and under-nourished. No one has good shoes; in fact most of them are barefoot. The disparity between our teams is glaring.

I am made goal-keeper. I am usually made goal-keeper because I am no good at playing. I know that I am no good, and everyone else knows it too, but since I am the catalyst, the one who gets it all going, I am held in fond respect. Who said young people aren't kind?!

The game starts. We have mixed the college kids with our people, they didn't have enough numbers, so it is not us against them. They are absolutely brilliant – agile, fast, impressively co-ordinated, untiring. We are completely wowed by them. My boys too are good – and as always I am almost moved to tears by how these normally serious sober youngsters, some of them so quiet and shy at office, are suddenly transformed into fired-up, passionate, intense people. It is a miracle. Just watching them, I know it was all worth it, starting this club, which everyone told me won't take off.



The scene is funny – in between our game, cricket balls come whooshing past, fielders come running in to catch them, a football comes in which is not ours and we kick it back. There is very little space, but no one minds really.

A bright yellow cricket ball soars up up into the sky – above the shadow of the huge 8 floor office building, it catches the last rays of the setting sun – and glows for a brief glorious second.

I don't know most of the rules of the game. I don't ever watch football, I didn't even see the World Cup. Like all sports, I'd rather play the game than watch it.

The amazing footwork of the boys fascinates me as always. Each time, I think – oh, this is so much like dance, what grace. And all the while, even with the limited movement of a goal-keeper, my shoelaces keep getting undone.

One of the boys in the other team is standing near me, holding his tummy, he is exhausted. He is new to office, I don't even know his name. I smile at him. He says he hasn't played in 11 years. I tell him I haven't played in 28!

In between people go off to answer mobile phones, in the other team people have taken turns becoming goal-keeper – whoever gets tired becomes goal-keeper, is our rule – the light is fading, but we don't want to stop. After the initial slips, I am learning to become a reasonably good goal-keeper, and everyone cheers when I manage to keep well, even the opposite team. Like Siddarth, who comes over to shake my hand after I nearly crush it catching the ball coming at me at full speed. I am proud when I fall down, because I saved our team. I am 10 years old again.

At 6.30 it is almost dark, and we stop. Towards the end, we were so admiring the young kids, we forgot to count the goals. We all won, we all had such a good time. I shake hands with the kids and tell them they are superb players. They smile, they are now more at ease with us. And they must've found me really weird – I was the only woman playing in the entire playground – and definitely the oldest. It strikes me that I am old enough to be the mother of some of them, though I am small and have weird Calvin hair.

We walk back to the office in the dimming light. Above us the huge rain-trees have closed their leaves and gone to sleep, the crows are back in their nests. As we climb back up the stairs when everyone else is going home, I think – this is the way the week should end, this is the way the weekend should begin. Under the blue blue sky, camaraderie takes on a different meaning altogether. I remember Walt Whitman, beloved friend, who had the right words for everything:

"I think heroic deeds were all conceiv'd in the open air, and all great poems also;
I think I could stop here myself, and do miracles............................"

Asha, 2006