(Published in The Economic Times on Jan 14, 2010)
The recent arrest of a local politician for alleged immoral trafficking has catapulted into one of the most talked-about events in Kerala. The person, Rajmohan Unnithan, a member of All India Congress Committee (AICC), has been suspended from his party and barred from travelling outside Kerala by a local court since his arrest in the night of December 20.
Sounds pretty normal. What is not normal is the way this small-time Malayalam film actor was taken into police custody and charged with such a serious offence.
According to various media reports, local activists of DYFI, the youth wing of ruling CPI-M, and the People’s Democratic Party of Abdul Nasser Madani, broke into a house at Manjeri in Malappuram district to find Unnithan was with a woman. They accused the two grown-ups of immoral activity, took their photographs and held public hearing for hours before handling them over to the police.
Unnithan and his 32-year-old female companion, a former Congress Sewa Dal member, were subjected to medical tests and had to spend a night in the police station before being granted bail by the Manjeri first class judicial magistrate the next day.
All this for being in the same house?!
Since that day, Unnithan has been using all his time, energy and oratory skills to explain he was set up and that he had no sexual relationship with the woman in question.
Most commentators, bloggers and public at large are debating what the two grown-ups were doing in the house and trying to guess what comment from this otherwise small fry in politics may have led to such a trap.
(Unnithan is known for his sharp and often nasty remarks. For example, when Congress invited K Karunakaran to rejoin the party, this is how he explained why the former chief minister’s son Muraleedharan was not invited: “Vada comes free with masala dosa in Udupi hotels, you don’t need to order separately.”)
His own party, Congress, has ordered a probe into the incident.
Very few people in the state have come out to say the real issue was about violation of privacy and that consensual sex has nothing to do with illegal trafficking. One prominent person who did it, writer Paul Zacharia, has allegedly been roughed up by DYFI activists for doing so.
That’s God’s Own Country. A paradox. It leaves the rest of the country far behind in social indicators such as literacy, healthcare and social awareness, yet Kerala remains one of the most backward places in man-woman relationship.
At the beautiful Varkala beach in south Kerala, Indians are not allowed to bathe in the main beach. It’s kept exclusively for foreigners. There’s no need to argue with the security guards or local police. Just watching how sensitive sun-bathing foreigners are to local stares is good enough.
At Kovalam’s famed Hawah Beach too, it’s hard to spot brown skin in a sea of bare-bodied sunbathers.
That may sound like conservative, hinterland India. But Kerala is progressive. It believes in equality. It voted the first democratically elected Communist government into power. It has implemented land reforms. Here, girl children are taken care of, they are well-educated, confident and most of them work for a living, many outside the state.
Yet, here, even young husbands and wives are reluctant to share the same seat in local buses and college boys and girls seem reluctant to mingle with each other outside campuses. It’s next to impossible to find a local woman in a bar or see a woman travel alone after sunset.
Despite all its progressive claims and the ability of its people to adapt to different conditions around the world — it’s said that there are more Malayalis outside the state than within — Kerala remains a male-dominated society that’s caught in a moral backwardness. Only exceptions could be among the youth in cities like Kochi and Thiruvananthapuram.
Here, only man is human. He errs. He drinks and robs, and sometimes kills. But woman is beyond all that. She’s a goddess, or furniture, or a machine. She’s incapable of action. She can’t sin. She can’t live.
Here’s the most Catholic society in the world. It lives in a false morality that stands between man and woman, increasing their distance and distrust, and turning people into perverts. There are numerous sex scandals and cases of gang-rapes. Yet, everybody is moral policing. Sex is a sin in the God’s Own Country.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Soccer Mom
(Published in The Economic Times on Dec 28, 2009)
It’s a winter evening. There’s a chill in the air. The big orange sun has packed up its rays and is set to disappear beyond the metro station on the other side of the small playground. Little Soham is not aware and not bothered. His eyes are fixed on another big orange ball as he starts warming up his legs with nimble steps, his body bent forward, fists clinched, his loose red shorts barely visible under an oversized white jersey. So are the other 25-30 pairs of eyes on the playground as his playmates chant “Soham, Soham, Soham…”.
The lanky Nigerian coach whistles. Little Soham runs in. His thin, fragile legs moving in perfect tandem; no slowing down, no last minute adjustment, he goes through the shot as fluently as Lionel Messi. The goalkeeper, double his size and age, jumps and pushes the ball over the crossbar. Soham’s tiny hands rush to his head in complete dejection as the crowd sighs “ooh”. Nobody notices a metro train, a new attraction in this part of the city, passing by or the sun vanishing or even the small mount of mosquitoes above their heads. Even the goalkeeper looks sorry.
Little Soham, three feet tall and five years old, is a football prodigy. He started playing the game when he was three-and-half and spends more than eight hours everyday on football, on the field or practising in the living room or watching European club matches on TV. He can already do tricks that most of his elder playmates can’t, and is easily the star on this ground.
“If he had scored he would have gone sliding,” says Anju Abbott with a wide grin that bares her gums. She is all excited about Soham. Everybody else is equally excited about Anju.
That’s because, if Soham or any other of the close to 50 children getting trained here goes on to become professional footballers, this slender unassuming housewife will be one of the first persons they would remember.
Anju is the one that gave Delhi’s Mayur Vihar its first soccer coaching centre where two Nigerian professional footballers are taking turns to teach the basics of the game to these children.
Most people living in this populous middle class area in East Delhi may not even suspect the existence of any such thing.
“I came to know about it from Soham’s aunt Neeti Rajeev, who is a friend of Anju,” says Naveen Varshneya, Soham’s father, who is determined to help his only son become a footballer if his craze for the beautiful game stays alive. But Naveen just can’t imagine what he would have done if the ‘Black Tigers Soccer Club’ was not there in the neighbourhood.
Most parents who send their children to Black Tigers, which is still waiting for the Delhi Soccer Association to register its name, would not have considered giving soccer training to their wards if not for Anju.
So how come a woman who herself never played football initiate a coaching centre? “Sports was always my passion,” she says, adjusting the hood of her maroon pullover before running away to kick back a ball to the play area.
She is hyper-active, clapping and cheering kids, taking part in the drill, showing kids how to do this and that, never sitting or leaning or even relaxing as she talks in short spurts. Clearly, she is a natural athlete.
Yet, Anju never became a professional sportswoman, mainly because her parents wouldn’t allow her to pursue sports after school. She used to take part in every sports event in her neighbourhood school in Karol Bagh, where she grew up as the third and youngest child of a middle class businessman.
“Nobody gave me any encouragement, but somehow I managed to keep up with my jogging and yoga,” says Anju.
All that changed with her marriage to Sandeep Abbott, a chartered accountant who runs his own business of sales promotion and who happened to share her passion for sports. “We started going for swimming and jogging together,” she says.
Her tryst with football, however, started as a mother. Some five years ago, Anju and Sandeep’s only son Pushkin, then seven years old, fell in love with his football and wanted proper coaching.
The Abbotts were keen to fulfill his wishes, but realised that there was no soccer training facility anywhere nearby. Cricket was the only popular sport. “We tried to persuade him to learn cricket but he said nothing doing,” says Anju.
For the next two years or so, Anju and Pushkin spent a lot of their time in autos and buses, first going to Jawahar Lal Nehru Stadium in Delhi and then to the Noida stadium in Uttar Pradesh.
“Everyday we would go at around 3.30 as soon as he came back from school and by the time we reached home, it would be 9 in the night. But we never missed a session.” While her son trained, Anju would jog.
The shift to Noida after about a year in the Delhi stadium improved timings slightly, but the Abbotts were not satisfied with the facilities or the sessions.
Then one day, they met a couple of Nigerian players who had come to the stadium to play a game for a local club. The Abbotts found them good and asked them if they could coach Pushkin.
A series of meetings followed, covering everything from immigration status to fees and a deal was struck. The two Nigerians — Decka and Kalechi — would take turns to train the boy for 2-3 hours at a nearby ground five days a week.
Their search for a ground led them to a ghost of a playground with overgrown grass, weeds and trash on uneven surface facing the new Samachar Metro Station. The Abbotts spent their own money to clean and level the field, lay grass, repair the goalposts and the pipeline to water the ground. The field was ready in a couple of weeks and training started.
That was three years ago. Within 10 days, a group of children approached the coaches wanting to join them. “We were not very keen at first, but then we thought we should. After all, we had a lot of difficulties ourselves,” says Anju, who also enjoys cooking and reading.
Today, there are about 50 young members aged between 5 and 16 in the Black Tigers club, which has already won several trophies in various under 16, under 10 and under 7 tournaments. George and Daniel, also Nigerians, have taken over as coaches as Decka and Kalechi have returned to their homeland. “All these guys are very committed and on most days parents have to tell them ‘let’s pack up for the day’,” says Anju.
Her own drive is stronger though, and drill tougher. She gets the park maintained and watered and runs to the Delhi Development Authority for sanctions for everything, besides supervising the training. “Black Tiger is a story of social entrepreneurship by a woman who is a true mentor and her efforts are paying off,” says Naveen Varshneya.
The club charges small contributions from the parents every month, but the Abbotts have no plans to make it a profitable business venture. At least not yet.
“No other feeling can match the satisfaction we get after playing with these kids for three hours,” she says, adding that Sandeep joins them every Sunday.
“There’s a lot more that needs to be done in terms of facilities,” says Anju about future plans. But she has no set targets or fixed plans. After all, for Black Tigers, nothing was planned. Everything just fell into place.
“This was not a dream. Some things we get without any dream,” she says, while greeting Naveen with a wide grin and a hand wave.
It’s almost dark and yet Soham is angry that his father has arrived to take him home. “Not now, not now,” cries the little striker, who is sporting a pair of extra-small boots specially made in Jalandhar and procured at no extra cost by a local sports goods shop owner overwhelmed by the boy’s passion. He doesn’t want to meet new people and shake hands. All he wants is his father’s nod to play on. Once he gets it, he rushes back to his coach and playmates.
“He is only concerned about the ball and the goal, nothing else matters,” says Anju, baring her gums and her bundle of energy and passion.
It’s a winter evening. There’s a chill in the air. The big orange sun has packed up its rays and is set to disappear beyond the metro station on the other side of the small playground. Little Soham is not aware and not bothered. His eyes are fixed on another big orange ball as he starts warming up his legs with nimble steps, his body bent forward, fists clinched, his loose red shorts barely visible under an oversized white jersey. So are the other 25-30 pairs of eyes on the playground as his playmates chant “Soham, Soham, Soham…”.
The lanky Nigerian coach whistles. Little Soham runs in. His thin, fragile legs moving in perfect tandem; no slowing down, no last minute adjustment, he goes through the shot as fluently as Lionel Messi. The goalkeeper, double his size and age, jumps and pushes the ball over the crossbar. Soham’s tiny hands rush to his head in complete dejection as the crowd sighs “ooh”. Nobody notices a metro train, a new attraction in this part of the city, passing by or the sun vanishing or even the small mount of mosquitoes above their heads. Even the goalkeeper looks sorry.
Little Soham, three feet tall and five years old, is a football prodigy. He started playing the game when he was three-and-half and spends more than eight hours everyday on football, on the field or practising in the living room or watching European club matches on TV. He can already do tricks that most of his elder playmates can’t, and is easily the star on this ground.
“If he had scored he would have gone sliding,” says Anju Abbott with a wide grin that bares her gums. She is all excited about Soham. Everybody else is equally excited about Anju.
That’s because, if Soham or any other of the close to 50 children getting trained here goes on to become professional footballers, this slender unassuming housewife will be one of the first persons they would remember.
Anju is the one that gave Delhi’s Mayur Vihar its first soccer coaching centre where two Nigerian professional footballers are taking turns to teach the basics of the game to these children.
Most people living in this populous middle class area in East Delhi may not even suspect the existence of any such thing.
“I came to know about it from Soham’s aunt Neeti Rajeev, who is a friend of Anju,” says Naveen Varshneya, Soham’s father, who is determined to help his only son become a footballer if his craze for the beautiful game stays alive. But Naveen just can’t imagine what he would have done if the ‘Black Tigers Soccer Club’ was not there in the neighbourhood.
Most parents who send their children to Black Tigers, which is still waiting for the Delhi Soccer Association to register its name, would not have considered giving soccer training to their wards if not for Anju.
So how come a woman who herself never played football initiate a coaching centre? “Sports was always my passion,” she says, adjusting the hood of her maroon pullover before running away to kick back a ball to the play area.
She is hyper-active, clapping and cheering kids, taking part in the drill, showing kids how to do this and that, never sitting or leaning or even relaxing as she talks in short spurts. Clearly, she is a natural athlete.
Yet, Anju never became a professional sportswoman, mainly because her parents wouldn’t allow her to pursue sports after school. She used to take part in every sports event in her neighbourhood school in Karol Bagh, where she grew up as the third and youngest child of a middle class businessman.
“Nobody gave me any encouragement, but somehow I managed to keep up with my jogging and yoga,” says Anju.
All that changed with her marriage to Sandeep Abbott, a chartered accountant who runs his own business of sales promotion and who happened to share her passion for sports. “We started going for swimming and jogging together,” she says.
Her tryst with football, however, started as a mother. Some five years ago, Anju and Sandeep’s only son Pushkin, then seven years old, fell in love with his football and wanted proper coaching.
The Abbotts were keen to fulfill his wishes, but realised that there was no soccer training facility anywhere nearby. Cricket was the only popular sport. “We tried to persuade him to learn cricket but he said nothing doing,” says Anju.
For the next two years or so, Anju and Pushkin spent a lot of their time in autos and buses, first going to Jawahar Lal Nehru Stadium in Delhi and then to the Noida stadium in Uttar Pradesh.
“Everyday we would go at around 3.30 as soon as he came back from school and by the time we reached home, it would be 9 in the night. But we never missed a session.” While her son trained, Anju would jog.
The shift to Noida after about a year in the Delhi stadium improved timings slightly, but the Abbotts were not satisfied with the facilities or the sessions.
Then one day, they met a couple of Nigerian players who had come to the stadium to play a game for a local club. The Abbotts found them good and asked them if they could coach Pushkin.
A series of meetings followed, covering everything from immigration status to fees and a deal was struck. The two Nigerians — Decka and Kalechi — would take turns to train the boy for 2-3 hours at a nearby ground five days a week.
Their search for a ground led them to a ghost of a playground with overgrown grass, weeds and trash on uneven surface facing the new Samachar Metro Station. The Abbotts spent their own money to clean and level the field, lay grass, repair the goalposts and the pipeline to water the ground. The field was ready in a couple of weeks and training started.
That was three years ago. Within 10 days, a group of children approached the coaches wanting to join them. “We were not very keen at first, but then we thought we should. After all, we had a lot of difficulties ourselves,” says Anju, who also enjoys cooking and reading.
Today, there are about 50 young members aged between 5 and 16 in the Black Tigers club, which has already won several trophies in various under 16, under 10 and under 7 tournaments. George and Daniel, also Nigerians, have taken over as coaches as Decka and Kalechi have returned to their homeland. “All these guys are very committed and on most days parents have to tell them ‘let’s pack up for the day’,” says Anju.
Her own drive is stronger though, and drill tougher. She gets the park maintained and watered and runs to the Delhi Development Authority for sanctions for everything, besides supervising the training. “Black Tiger is a story of social entrepreneurship by a woman who is a true mentor and her efforts are paying off,” says Naveen Varshneya.
The club charges small contributions from the parents every month, but the Abbotts have no plans to make it a profitable business venture. At least not yet.
“No other feeling can match the satisfaction we get after playing with these kids for three hours,” she says, adding that Sandeep joins them every Sunday.
“There’s a lot more that needs to be done in terms of facilities,” says Anju about future plans. But she has no set targets or fixed plans. After all, for Black Tigers, nothing was planned. Everything just fell into place.
“This was not a dream. Some things we get without any dream,” she says, while greeting Naveen with a wide grin and a hand wave.
It’s almost dark and yet Soham is angry that his father has arrived to take him home. “Not now, not now,” cries the little striker, who is sporting a pair of extra-small boots specially made in Jalandhar and procured at no extra cost by a local sports goods shop owner overwhelmed by the boy’s passion. He doesn’t want to meet new people and shake hands. All he wants is his father’s nod to play on. Once he gets it, he rushes back to his coach and playmates.
“He is only concerned about the ball and the goal, nothing else matters,” says Anju, baring her gums and her bundle of energy and passion.
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