Sonagachi’s soccer champs

Floating over the crumbling buildings of the British Raj, the stores displaying sequinned spaghetti-tops, and the smell of frying mirchi bhaja, were the sounds of Sonagachi’s street children: the patter of bare feet, the panting from cleaning windshields, the knock of knuckles at the rolled-up windows at a traffic junction. Not anymore. Thanks to one man’s efforts to bring a few children from the marginalised community of Kolkata’s oldest red-light district to the centre of society.

Public health scientist Smarajit Jana spearheads the Durbar Mahila Samanwaya Committee, a syndicate that bands together Sonagachi’s sex workers against the many injustices they encounter in their daily lives. Besides rights advocacy, and anti-human trafficking and HIV prevention drives, the Committee has helped put together a football team of around 100 children of sex workers. At the committee-run school and hostel, Rahul Vidya Niketan at Baruipur in the 24 Parganas, a sports complex is slowly taking shape, funded entirely by the earnings of sex workers.

Close by is the football field. Approached by kutcha roads, it is a green patch, pockmarked with puddles. Teen boys in colourful T-shirts emblazoned with the names of sponsors like Maruti, Kolkata Police and Red FM cry out to each other, “ Bhalo kore mon diye khal (concentrate on the game)! ” The goalposts are nothing more than concrete poles and nets on the ground, but the kids play with the single-minded zeal of professionals. Angry outbursts are gently quelled by a watchful coach, and at the end of the game there are high fives and pats on the head. Asked how long they’ve been playing, coach Bishwajeet Majumdar says, “It has been a couple of months for most… Amazing what sports can do for a child.”

A few months ago, Rajib Roy, also raised in Sonagachi, was spotted by United Scouts at a tournament in India and went on to receive training at the prestigious Manchester United Soccer School. “People keep asking me how it feels to be my mother’s son and then achieve something like this,” he told the international soccer school, “I don’t know how to answer that. But when my coach said I had been selected by Manchester United, it was like a father’s recognition,” said the teen.

Last year, Biswajit Nandi and Surojit Bhattacharya did the Durbar team and its coach proud. They played in the West Bengal Slum Soccer team at the National Slum Soccer Tournament in Nagpur and later represented India at the Homeless World Cup in Poznan, Poland.

The rules of Slum Soccer are different from a regular game. Each team fields four players, including the goalkeeper. The 15-minute game — seven minutes for each half and a one-minute break — is played on a 16x22 metre field bound by a low wall.

Local coaches and football stalwarts select 10 players each for the male and female teams, although only eight end up travelling to the World Cup. “We select 10 because sometimes the girls and boys have police cases against them and cannot get passports,” says Abhijeet Barse, a representative of Slum Soccer, which is an offshoot of Krida Vikas Sanstha — a non-governmental charitable trust.

Vijay Barse, a sports teacher at a Nagpur college, started Slum Soccer in 2011 after stumbling upon street children kicking around a broken bucket. He visited 16 slums and invited children to play in teams. Through weekend sessions and football camps, the organisation reaches out to 70,000 men, women and children in 63 districts of India.

Over the past three years, it has been conducting an annual nationwide football contest with participation from seven states. Besides showcasing young talent, the tournament helps select the Indian squad for the Homeless World Cup. With funding raised from corporates and events, the organisation takes care of the travel and accommodation costs of the participants and their coaches. Besides training, counselling and access to nutritionists, the players are also provided with basic education and awareness on health, gender equality, HIV/AIDS and the environment. For Bishwajit Nandi, a teenager with spiked hair and silver chains around his neck and wrists, last year’s meet in Poznan, where 64 nations competed over eight days, will remain etched in his memory forever. “It was an incredible experience. I was so excited and nervous about taking a flight,” he says. Nandi travelled to Poland with his Durbar teammate Surojit Bhattacharya — together, they had earlier impressed selectors at the national tourney by scoring an incredible 28 goals between them.

“We arrived in Poland seven days before the match and practised every day. They had great fields, coaches and trainers. The food was horrible though… just boiled meat. But that’s what great sportsmen eat. So we ate it too,” says Bhattacharya. They brought back memories of a clean city, its fancy cars and a sports kit shop that had “best quality stuff”.

Although the team lost miserably, the Durbar boys were the highest scorers in the series, duly cheered and felicitated. “So many girls approached us after we won,” says Nandi. “We made friends from Argentina and Mexico. I still email them from the internet centre.”

Back home now, Bhattacharya lives with his mother at Habra and catches the local train at the crack of dawn to reach the ground. “I used to sneak out of the Durbar home to catch matches on TV. This World Cup, I was supporting Argentina. I love Messi,” he says, “One day, I’d love to be coached by Pep Guardiola.”

Nidhi Dugar Kundalia is a Kolkata-based writer

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