Around the ground in late 80’s !

Ja.Ra.Sundaresan [ Baakiyam Ramasamy ] has swapped the famous title of Sujatha’s “Katrad­hum Petrad­hum” for his humor­ous arti­cle about receiv­ing gifts as “Petrad­hum Katrad­hum”.  So as the title of this post — that’s the way we played football.

The power of any school is deter­mined by its ground size.. at least as far our friends are con­cerned. My school is just another place for those who can­not be “main­tained “at home. The great­est fac­tors about my school are the excel­lent man­age­ment, sophis­ti­cated class­rooms, fans, marker boards, state of the art labs, trained coaches for sports, Yoga, draw­ing, NCC, NSS, prop­erly main­tained buses…Stop..Stop.. None of them were avail­able in our school.. It’s just one another GBHSS you find in any town of Tamil­Nadu, with a bro­ken grill gate and an open cycle stand.

[ இங்க‌ வைக்க‌றோம் டைட்டில் சாங்க்.. பள்ளிக்கூட‌ம் போகாம‌ல்லே.. பாட‌ங்களைக் கேட்காம‌ல்லே..].

 We have the best play­ground in our school; really vast — 2 sep­a­rate foot­ball grounds. The geog­ra­phy of the school is very impor­tant — it’s sur­rounded by bus stand/bazaar in the east, some waste land in the south, Ettiyam­man koil in the north [ very influ­en­tial — we get half-day leave for any func­tion related to this tem­ple :) ] and a cin­ema the­atre in the west. My ambi­tion in life was to become a PT [ actu­ally P.Ed ] mas­ter in my school — what a life [ அப்துல் ..டீ சொல்டா].  Though they pos­sess some soft and God names like Muru­gan, Krish­nan they used to whack boys like “Kali” in Mul­lum Malarum or the para mil­i­tary forces dur­ing a mob violence.

Com­ing to the games.. first Kabadi. Play­ing with shirt or with­out shirt [ white ! ] is left up to the stu­dent. Next comes the process of iden­ti­fy­ing team mem­bers [ Sulaimaan namaku — Sulaimaan looks like the pris­oner in ‘The Green mile ’ movie ]. There are vari­ants of pro­nounc­ing the word Kabadi — Kabaat, KabOdi.. Kabut — no one said like kabbaddi..kabbadi in the film “Gilli” or “Ve Ka Kuzhu”. Those who were rejected in cricket came to Kabbadi.

Then comes the great cricket — Cricket is not allowed in the nor­mal days unless the PT mas­ter [ pro­nounced “Vaa­jjyaar” :) ] is on leave. Some­how, they favored foot­ball to a great extent. We played cricket in the week­ends — I mostly stayed away because of the 2 great rea­sons.. One.. ‘bad words’ that was offered if a catch/run-out/four is missed [ dam­age to dynasty :) ]. The other rea­son was the acci­dents that came out of the thick cork ball. The fel­low Mus­lim friends were really good in fast bowl­ing. I won­dered about a par­tic­u­lar friend Ismail — he is the fastest bowler that I know, till date.. [ பீஃப் சாப்ட்றாண்டா.. அதான் ! ].

 Foot­ball .. The actual villaiyaadu/vettaiyaadu episode was played on week­days.. Don’t imag­ine that just 4 teams play­ing in the 2 foot­ball grounds.. Remem­ber, it’s GBHSS. Around 20 teams play in each of the ground with dif­fer­ent sized foot­balls rang­ing from the 1 Rs rub­ber ball [ red n blue com­bi­na­tion :) ] to the actual foot­ball. We were also eli­gi­ble for 6 sigma  — we never missed our team and of course, the foot­ball. It was never con­fus­ing. It starts with form­ing the team -  first with 2 cap­tains and around 20 peo­ple sur­round­ing them rec­om­mend­ing friends [ இம்தியாஸ் சொல்லு.. R.கார்த்தி வேணாம்.. எழில் எங்க‌ சைட் :) ]. Then the game begins along with the exist­ing teams..

 The goal post always looks like a penalty game [ dif­fer­ent goal­keep­ers — actu­ally ].  Some­times the game ends abruptly when every­one takes a shot. My school looks extremely beau­ti­ful on a hol­i­day [ ஜிலோன்னு இருக்கும் ] — Remem­ber the lyrics of Yugab­harathi.. “Vidu­mu­rai naatkalil pal­likoodam”. Inter­est­ingly, we used to play foot­ball in the rain, too. The entire ground forms small streams of run­ning water and I have seen this in “Sariyaa idhu thavaraa”  in Kalloori film. At later stages in life, I heard that Mani­azh­agu [ 10th C sec­tion ] got a seat in sports quota in col­lege and became PT vaa­jyaar in our own school. For very few in life, their pas­sion becomes the profession.

[ இங்க‌ வைக்க‌றோம்  closing சாங்க்.. துள்ளித் திரிந்த‌தொரு கால‌ம்.. ப‌ள்ளி ப‌யின்ற‌தொறு கால‌ம்…].

பால்ய‌மும்
அத‌ன் நினைவுக‌ளும்
வ‌ற்றாத‌தொரு
வ‌ட்ட‌க் கிண‌று ..

என் எழுத்து
அதைத் துழாவுமொரு
பாதாள‌ கொலுசு

[ பால்ய‌த்துக்கு முன்னாடி என்ன‌ இருந்த‌து.. த‌ரைக் கிண‌றா.. :) ].

 :)

Toto.

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1. Gilly of Gully :)
2. The kite-runners — II