Football and slums

I do apologize for taking so long to continue my blog. Now that I have finished my travels around India, and settled down in Bangalore, I promise to write more often. The story shall be told!!!

In the last part of blog three I spoke about the group dynamics, the meeting with the Eunuchs and the visit to the hospital in Solapur...I'll continue from there: 

Our house in Solapur was a 100-year old building, dusty and tattered, yet charming. The group grew closer, the dynamics changed; we felt more comfortable in expressing our nature.

Two other protagonists in the group are Eesha and Lucy. I would describe them as a parallel couple to Amrish and Nickil, the Macho Mathematician and the Laid Back Banker. We have often said that they mirror each other in the opposite sex (this makes Amrish tick when blood is thinned with paracetamol and nerves are wrecked with caffeine).

Lucy, I would place in Amrish’s reflection. She is a smart yet hyper-talkative girl from the forest of Dean outside Bristol. She is studying Anthropology at the London School of Economics. She submerges her studies in to her life and can be seen analysing people all the time. This can be quite awful whilst, at the same time, interesting. It’s living life with anthropological definitions that follow every social interaction, on the go.

For this reason I call her Freud. She is constantly looking into Amrish’s ‘self’, a complex array of narcissism, aggression and macho. A man starved by vanity, he stared so long into his reflection and forgot to eat. She also fancies him, which has created a lot of excitement and tension amongst them and the group. They are both louder than each other - it’s almost like a competition. We all watch them. Their drama is infectious, just like a soap opera. Sometimes I wonder if it’s real - and - can I lower the volume! But, in the end, who can resist a laugh and a juicy bit of gossip to follow.

When Nickil looks into the mirror, Eesha is cast in his reflection. She is Lucy’s best friend from university also reading anthropology, yet she keeps her insights to herself. She is easy-going, just like Nickil.

Now this is where the drama starts: Amrish fancies Eesha. Lucy fancies Amrish. Lucy and Eesha are best friends. It’s almost like a syllogism for predicting what comes next. Arguments, egos AND FORGETTING THE POINT OF CHARITY. It is important to note that most groups doing this kind of work together naturally create a complex relationship between them. It is one of the many challenges of working in a large group responsible for the education of the poor. To overcome this pettiness was one of our group’s challenges - a great learning experience. To work effectively as a team means success.

The HCC Resource Centre

We drove in an SUV across the border to Gulbarga, a small city on the northern tip of the Karnataka state. Entering a new state for the first time was almost like entering a new country. Maybe I imagined it but the flora and fauna seemed different, the colours were darker, the sun was brighter, the people were darker and the soil a richer red.

We arrived at the school greeted by a large ‘welcome’ sign on the ground and children who gifted us with colourful garlands that were placed around our necks.

The school was called the HCC Resource Centre, even though it had little resources and more than 200 children. It was a small run down building with a small rocky field used as an excuse for playground. It was more depressing than the back garden of my east end flat.

The cross-wire relationship sparked a tension within the group and frustration followed. The majority of the group didn’t like this new place. They wanted to head back to Solapur where they felt they were of more use. They felt they were actually making a difference and were moved only because of the organisation’s programme. They reluctantly packed up their projects with the eunuchs and hospital and went work back in Solapur. The frustration caused them to see no point in attending so small a school. Hardly any impact could be made here. That was the general feeling upon arrival.

That was our cue. So Tom (my English friend) and I decided to disappear for a while to quietly pursue our own quest. So while the others left, it was Tom and I in Gulbarga. The charity is reasonably flexible and allowed us to create projects for the children. We joined a school in Gulbarga run by a middle aged women with the kindest face I’ve ever seen. She had a smooth round face almost like a peach, with dimpled cheeks and a modest smile that gave her the look of indifference to any situation. Her soft light brown eyes sat in two comforting grey bags that showed the mark of stress that the school had placed on her over the years. Yet she seemed to handle it with such dignity - with an aura of kindness and indifference. You couldn’t help but gaze curiously into those soft eyes every time you looked at her. We were told to address her as Madame. As soon as we met her we knew we wanted to stay.

This playground was empty, barren. It could almost be described as a children’s wasteland. It had no sports facilities, no life, no colour and a bad smell. Together, we had a vision; in the next week we would turn that place into an extravagant version of Michael Jackson’s (RIP) ‘Never land’. Mrs. Madame was happy with our idea and gave us a generous budget of 3,000 Rupees (40 Euros).

Together with Tom and his creative genius, we brought some brilliant ideas to the table - a bunch of different ways in which we could help improve the school. Creativity is the progress of humanity. (I mean really great ideas, Tom. Much more useful ideas than floating on those plastic bottles down a canal.) Now we know what an A-Level in Art can be good for.

Tom drew up plans on a scrappy piece of paper for the construction of 2 goal posts, a volleyball net, a swing ball, a see-saw, some inspirational quotes across the play ground, and colour to jazz the place up. You’re probably thinking: no way did they manage all that in a week – and you’re right. We were slightly over-ambitious. We managed, instead, to paint the quotes and theme the playground with the colours of India’s flag. We also realised that we were on a very tight budget and only managed to construct the goal posts out of bamboo.

But we did one thing that we are most proud of. We brought a new life to the school. We started HCC Resource Centre’s first-ever sports team - not a cricket team, but a football team. And they loved it.

After a few tournaments of football we were scheduled to pay a visit to a poor village in just outside Gulbarga, a small slum area. Being remote and far away unlike the slums in Mumbai, they had hardly seen foreigners before. My expectations were similar to those of the slums in Mumbai, the ones I had grown accustomed to, a place where I almost felt comfortable. How wrong I was.

It was a profoundly frightening place, a terrible shock to my comfortable self. The faces of deprivation on the children are images I will never forget. The children were horribly malnourished, almost deformed, like they had been exposed to some form of toxic radiation and weren’t allowed to develop into the handsome children they could have been, like the ones we had seen in other slum areas or rural villages. Oversized foreheads, crooked eyes, rotten yellow sharp teeth and compressed faces. It’s an awful thing to say but it was like looking at children in warped mirror of a haunted house. A distorted, unnatural image of the children they should have been. Such a sad sight.

As we stepped out of the van the children roared with frightful excitement. They jumped on us, grabbed us, scratched us, and pinched us. It felt almost sadistic, malicious, as if they gained pleasure from it. Like dogs in a pack, mauling a youngster, unaware of its traumatic effect.

It got too much and after some time we had to leave. They ran after the van for around five minutes as it left the area. Poor kids, it was like a nightmare, a bad dream. We later found out that the village was actually built on a toxic waste site. It made me wonder how lucky I was to be raised in such a lovely old town house. Imagine living on a toxic land, having no options to move because you don’t know better. You probably could not afford to, either. How lucky we are.

The next morning we woke up to the sight of children marching to the sound of beating drums. Just like an army discipline, a factory churning out little Indian soldiers. The majority under the age of 10, they marched in a perfectly straight line, every fourth notation precisely produced two little steps. They were on a mission…to drive India’s future and live its legacy. The pounding base roared spirit in their hearts. The form and consistency of their synchronised steps created a logical rhythm. Mathematical minds for future engineers. I wondered what children were doing in China. No wonder these two country’s are the real super powers in this world. They have something the other countries lack - discipline and critical mass.

The thoughts and sounds resonated in my mind for the rest of the day.

As our time in Gulbarga passed, we grew closer to the children, the school and the Madame with the kind face. We’d dine at her house in the evenings and talked about English curries, Indians and white skin and other topics of cultural difference - like two aliens making intellectual exchanges.

We also did a lot of coaching and played small matches during break time and while the bamboo goal posts were under construction. Our last game was a sad one as the kids begged us not to go. They loved the footie but we were due back to Solapur to finish off our tree planting before heading back to Mumbai. Two children who we grew particularly close to were called Stephen and Tofik. A funny pair. Like Lawrence and Hardy or Tom and Jerry, Stephen was the sharp minded, quick-tongued charmer who’d work his way into and out of any situation. Tofik was a tall, handsome, majestic youngster with a sporty build and the number one player in all our matches. Madame, if you are reading this, for their sake, please carry on the football games with our set up for goals and gentlemen points.