Football: Calcutta's own game
Yes, it's football! Only America calls it soccer.
The World Cup is in its penultimate stages. Nations across the world now house millions of zombified insomniacs but none more than Calcutta. Look at any Calcutta-specific dictionary and you'll see that the city is synonymous with the game!
The sport has been immortalised in popular films and songs made for and by the people of Calcutta. Each one of us can sing this timeless number from the 1971 film, Dhanni Meye starring that ultimate Calcutta icon, Uttam Kumar!
The best game of all
For Bengal
Is Football!
(My translation is true to the spirit of the song, almost true to the lyrics--Bengali, not Bengal--and it certainly rhymes as all good songs should!)
Here's the song on YouTube. Even if you don't understand the language, you'll get the emotion.
I was all of 7 or 8 when I was introduced to the fact that I had to take this game seriously if I was going to be a true Calcuttan. One evening, as we played in our para after school (Para, you ask? No, I'm not going there! That's a whole different post!), a huge Mohan Bagan-East Bengal argument erupted and my friend Anuradha promptly co-opted me into East Bengal fan-dom. (Years later, I married into a Mohan Bagan family--a betrayal we will also not talk about at this juncture!)
Calcutta's Mohan Bagan-East Bengal rivalry was legendary; in this era of swanky leagues, it is not so much a thing now. Now, (horrors) the same corporate entity owns both the teams! Back in my childhood, the entire city was divided between the maroon-green and the yellow-red--you were either one or the other for life. You could be excused only if you declared your loyalties to Mohammadan Sporting's dark henna green colours--an acceptable third option if you still wanted to be counted as a Calcuttan.
Of course, when the Word Cup came along, the city went into a frenzy. There was no TV but every tea stall, every para club, every 2nd person on the bus, every roadside shop had a transistor radio that doubled up as a magnet because it drew clusters of people to it. After the match--for literally years on end--every pass, every save, every goal, every heroic and demonic deed on the field would be discussed, debated, and hotly argued everywhere--but EVERYWHERE--in Calcutta.
For the world cups of course, Calcutta had its special loyalties with its typical lack of logic. Mohan Bagan and East Bengal became Brazil and Argentina (Why, you ask? Why not, says Calcutta?).
Banners, life-sized cutouts of Pele and Maradonna, flags and pennants on every street, much food, much song, much dance, and rassagollas for everybody you met: my Calcutta celebrated its game even when its heroes came from the opposite side of the world!
Don't believe me? Believe this and this and this!
But now most of us Calcuttans all over the world WhatsApp each other after we watch the games alone in our rooms on full-HD, big-screen, wall-mounted TVs.
Alas!
The World Cup is in its penultimate stages. Nations across the world now house millions of zombified insomniacs but none more than Calcutta. Look at any Calcutta-specific dictionary and you'll see that the city is synonymous with the game!
The sport has been immortalised in popular films and songs made for and by the people of Calcutta. Each one of us can sing this timeless number from the 1971 film, Dhanni Meye starring that ultimate Calcutta icon, Uttam Kumar!
The best game of all
For Bengal
Is Football!
(My translation is true to the spirit of the song, almost true to the lyrics--Bengali, not Bengal--and it certainly rhymes as all good songs should!)
Here's the song on YouTube. Even if you don't understand the language, you'll get the emotion.
I was all of 7 or 8 when I was introduced to the fact that I had to take this game seriously if I was going to be a true Calcuttan. One evening, as we played in our para after school (Para, you ask? No, I'm not going there! That's a whole different post!), a huge Mohan Bagan-East Bengal argument erupted and my friend Anuradha promptly co-opted me into East Bengal fan-dom. (Years later, I married into a Mohan Bagan family--a betrayal we will also not talk about at this juncture!)
Calcutta's Mohan Bagan-East Bengal rivalry was legendary; in this era of swanky leagues, it is not so much a thing now. Now, (horrors) the same corporate entity owns both the teams! Back in my childhood, the entire city was divided between the maroon-green and the yellow-red--you were either one or the other for life. You could be excused only if you declared your loyalties to Mohammadan Sporting's dark henna green colours--an acceptable third option if you still wanted to be counted as a Calcuttan.
Of course, when the Word Cup came along, the city went into a frenzy. There was no TV but every tea stall, every para club, every 2nd person on the bus, every roadside shop had a transistor radio that doubled up as a magnet because it drew clusters of people to it. After the match--for literally years on end--every pass, every save, every goal, every heroic and demonic deed on the field would be discussed, debated, and hotly argued everywhere--but EVERYWHERE--in Calcutta.
For the world cups of course, Calcutta had its special loyalties with its typical lack of logic. Mohan Bagan and East Bengal became Brazil and Argentina (Why, you ask? Why not, says Calcutta?).
Banners, life-sized cutouts of Pele and Maradonna, flags and pennants on every street, much food, much song, much dance, and rassagollas for everybody you met: my Calcutta celebrated its game even when its heroes came from the opposite side of the world!
Don't believe me? Believe this and this and this!
But now most of us Calcuttans all over the world WhatsApp each other after we watch the games alone in our rooms on full-HD, big-screen, wall-mounted TVs.
Alas!
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