On Mohun Bagan, and numbing nostalgia

Today, my team won. My Mohun Bagan. In a most wondrous fashion, blowing away their opponents
5-0, setting a record in a final in a tournament that once decided the champion team in Indian club
football. Once. Today the final was played in front of maybe a thousand people, in a neutral venue
which more importantly, is in a state which has never had any presence in the Indian football scenario.
Still, there were giant flags of green and maroon, and the frenzied happiness of those that carried and
draped the flags around themselves and whichever parts of the stadium they could access. There were
fans of the opponent team also, and they were passionate and vociferous as well long have they been
in a state of denial. They had done wonderfully well to reach this stage, having upset the so-called
champions of India, the winners of the ever-bumbling I-league (and who were subsequently put in
their place by my team through an identical margin as todays) in their own den. Today the freshers
were taken apart by my team in the second half most systematically, by the best forward line that this
team has probably ever had (at least since I have watched them play for the last thirty-eight years).
And yet, I feel sad. For this is perhaps the end. If things go as per the plans of the ruling body of
Indian football, the clubs that have been part of my childhood, my roots, and many a times my
happiness and sadness, would become second class teams with second string players playing in an
inconsequential tournament with the best being drawn away in corporate clubs spawned to cause the
upliftment of Indian football! Kick in money they say, kick in professionalism, kick out the
passion. Kick out belonging, kick out roots, kick out footballing blood feuds and history. Improve the
quality they say! But at the cost of what? What association for Atletico de Kolkata would a Mohun
Bagan or East Bengal fan of Durgapur and Asansol and Bengaluru and Mumbai feel? There are of
course those who are snooty-nosed about the quality of football that these teams produce and are
thus fans of some Manchesters or Madrids. That is fine, power to them! Perhaps they did not live
lonely childhoods where joy was delivered through Ajay Bose and Sukumar Samajpatis voices
buzzing out of Philips transistor radios when Xavier Pias scored in the last minute against Port Trust
to win the game or East Bengal dropped that all important point against Railway FC. Their
adolescences were not black and white Jamshid Nasiris breaking hearts by immaculate headers from
Krishanu Deys crosses or Krishnagopals mesmerizing, logic-defining run through the middle left
culminating with a strange push into an open goal with poor Bhaskar Ganguly anticipating the
obvious centre towards the second post. Their summer vacations were not fevered imaginings of an
entire team list of invisible Khidderpore playing against a solitary ten year old in a half maroon half
green jersey (which was what Mohun Bagan wore till the late seventies) playing with an old football
as Prasun and Manas and Bidesh and Subrata in a huge red-cement verandah of an ancestral jomidarbari in mango-smelling Telinipara, tripping over the veins of old age that had grown on the cement.
We were born in the Kolkata of CPM, broken Chowringhee due to the never-ending Metro project,
loadshedding nights which smelt of sweat and Dada and Dimma and Maa amidst frustrated ghost
houses shimmering in smoggy moonlight, Gavaskar pretending to hit young Vengsarkar with his bat
because the latter had almost run him out at the Eden, andfootball. Muddy, muggy, magical
football. Ours has been a strange generation, born in the times of a failed could-have-been-butactually-never-even-threatened-seriously-revolution, schooled during the times of lanterns and second
channel on Doordarshan, colleged during Babri Masjid and Nandan, and then burst into middle youth
along with the real revolutions called the internet and globalization. We have buried institutions on
our way, and have discovered a mirage called progress. Single-minded, solitary, determined, heartless,
and meaningless, progress. That seemingly has no space for low productivity, and measures
everything with efficiency. That understands numbers only and projections for the future. That is so
colourfully glamorous on the outside. And so completely thoughtless in the inside. Could the AIFF
not planned the corporatization of football with the existing clubs in mind? Could they not have
nurtured the raw passion that the millions of fans still feel for them, at least those of the two Kolkata
giants? One other giant has already been floored, a team that was part of the Teen Prodhaan of our
childhood is in its death-throes, and we actually have not cared so much since to all intents and
purposes, they represented the minority who have slowly bowed out of our concerns now (even in our
adolescence every Hindi film title used to be shown in Urdu, remember?). And now, if this diktat of
AIFF stays, so will the other two giants. And not slowly will they perish. They will be decapitated, in
one fell swoop. Reduced to second division clubs, who would not be able to afford even a single

talented Indian player. We will see how many notches in the FIFA rankings India will climb up after
this plan is put into action. The IPL has seen India not win a single T20 World cup since it began,
besides breeding a generation of batsmen who cannot play any quality bowling attack on even slightly
helpful pitches be it pace or spin. It has generated revenue of course, and provided a heady mix of
filmy-type entertainment on cricket grounds to the masses. Two hoots for cricket itself. But then,
India still wins in cricket. India will not win in football with such an absolutely uncaring, exploitative,
corrupt administration running it. We will continue to be in the doldrums.
Only, I and a million like me, would have a big vacuum in our lives. And memories coloured green
and maroon, and red and gold