In November 1945, shortly after the blood-soaked wheels of World War II had finally ground to a halt, the citizens of England were treated to a unique spectacle. A foreign football team, Dynamo Moscow, would be touring the country and playing English clubs for the first time in over half a decade.
England and Russia had ended WWII on the same side, and though geo-political considerations were already beginning to strain their relationship, it was hoped the ‘goodwill tour’ by a football club would bring some much-needed cheer to a war-worn population. And so, the Russian football league champions were despatched to England to test their mettle against the people who (wrongly) claimed to have created the sport.
One can accuse the English football media of many things: pompousness, racism, grossly over-estimating the England football team’s ability to win, and so on. But one can never accuse them of faltering in their belief, fervent and whole-hearted, that their footballers, purely on account of being English (and preferably white), are far superior to anyone else on the planet. This belief burns brightly today, and seems to have burnt just as brightly half a century ago.
When the football tour began in November 1945, the English media had written off the visitors, with one newspaper dismissing them as “only beginners, blue-collars, amateurs.” By the time the tour ended after four games, Dynamo Moscow had won two games, drawn the other two, and managed to score 10 goals in a single game.
These results naturally shocked the English press and the tour has become a part of footballing folklore. But to one man, a certain George Orwell, the tour was nothing more than “war minus the shooting”.
Orwell wrote his famous essay, The Sporting Spirit, on the heels of Dynamo Moscow’s 1945 tour of England. It is chock full of quotable lines about international sport being “mimic warfare” and a means to stoke nationalistic passions. Exhibiting quite a bit of passion himself, he wrote:
It is the most violently combative sports, football and boxing, that have spread the widest. There cannot be much doubt that the whole thing is bound up with the rise of nationalism – that is, with the lunatic modern habit of identifying oneself with large power units and seeing everything in terms of competitive prestige.
Now I may be going out on a limb here but his characterization of sports as being “bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence”, makes me think the man may not have been a big fan of sports. And yet, while a lot of what he says is true, sport is not the irredeemable evil Orwell made it out to be. Sport can also bring people together; it can give you a family.
When I moved to this city as a fresh-faced, already-balding, twenty-two-year-old, it was my first time living away from home1. But the wonderful thing about families, is that they need not be established solely through bonds of blood. Families, much like damp on the walls of Bombay apartments, can spring up anywhere given the right conditions.
My first family in this city was the quintessential, three-member, nuclear unit. My flatmates: Arpan and Shaswata, and me. It helped, of course, that we had known each other since our school and college days - there were no unpleasant surprises for any of us. For more than seven years, we lived together, ate together, vacationed together and even worked together. If you happened to bump into one of us, odds were at least one of the other two would be in the vicinity. If it were not for the small matter of each of us getting married, we may have continued co-habiting well into our dotage. Fortunately, though we are now separated spatially, familial ties have been maintained on account of me unilaterally appointing myself godfather to their present (and future) children.
My second family in Bombay formed more gradually, accreting individuals and experiences over time. It had begun innocently enough, more than a decade ago, with an email chain inviting interested parties to a weekend football game. We would meet at a scheduled ground, uproot the waist-high weeds to clear a small patch, use our bags as goal-posts of dubious quality (That was a goal! No, it went over the bag, it’s not a goal!), and let everything else fade into the background as we succumbed to the unrestrained joy that only comes from kicking a ball around.
The gardening-cum-footballing weekends led to the birth of an amateur football club2 (Lex United FC) and participation (and victories!) in Sunday leagues and tournaments; then, post-game breakfasts, birthday parties, the annual pujo dinner, weddings, and eventually, any excuse to just hang out. As the years rolled by, we added members to our ranks and traded the weed-covered grounds in the suburbs, for expensive, flawless turfs in the heart of the city. And somewhere along the way, we let ourselves seep into each other's lives in a manner unique to migrants seeking something, anything, that can anchor them to an adopted city. Somewhere, in the midst of tackling each other and kicking each other on the shins, we had created something that bound us, that gave us a shared identity. George Orwell may not have thought it possible, but sport had birthed a family.
You didn’t think I was going to let this newsletter go by without making any mention of Pujo, did you? What kind of Bengali would that make me!3
Here’s wishing a very Subho Shoshti to all of you! When I was a kid Shoshti was the dawn of pujo, the beginnings of pandal-hopping and the fast-food feeding frenzy that would grip the city for the next four days. People would be trickling into the streets - the rivulets which would soon become a torrent, the crowd would be languorously stretching its tentacles, as if testing waters. It was the final lull before the storm.
Now, I believe Shosti has practically become the mid-point of the festivities. (It has been many years since my last visit to Kolkata during pujo). The celebratory days are being stretched like a rubber band, determined to expand until they eventually reach the designated breaking points of Mahalaya and Dashami.
Pujo serves up many memories and stories, but I suspect I have claimed more than my fair share of your time today. Besides, I am yet to visit the pockets of Bombay where pujo is celebrated (a pale shadow of the euphoria in Kolkata, but it must suffice) and until I do, I am unable to experience the feeling of pujo. Another time, perhaps.
I will leave you with a 90s advertisement that defined the romance of pujo for a generation. It's in Bengali and I've taken the liberty to present a (non-literal) translation:
Our paths first crossed on Saptami
On Ashtami, we swapped smiles,
All I wanted to do on Nabami
Was to ask if you'd be mine.
On Dashami, my heart was gripped
By a sudden restless fever,
My heart, my love, tell me if
I'll see you by the river.
(Note the absence of Shoshti in the lyrics. The OGs know that real pujo starts from Saptami.)
Regular readers, I can see you rolling your eyes and saying, “Gawd, not this again”. I know by now, you are all intimately familiar with the details of my life. But over the past few days, a number of new subscribers have joined us (welcome!), so I would be grateful for your patience as I take them through some of the old material.
We have a crest and a motto (which I cannot reproduce here due to censorship concerns). We take ourselves very seriously.
The kind that does not eat fish. But let’s not get into that right now. (Fellow Bengalis are welcome to read this and abuse me, at leisure).