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Exclusive
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Rajvardhan Rathore with his message for fans of Dehradun Football.
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Shyam Thapa exclusive interview about dehradun football.
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Bhupendra Singh Rawat- Highest goalscorer in Durand Cup
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Aslam Khan,
Vice President Indian Olympic Association column on history of
Dehradun football
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Dehradun Dynamite
Ram Bahadur
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For country and for club
RAMACHANDRA GUHA
THE HINDU
Sunday, January 21, 2001
A RECENT issue of India Today had a cover story on the match- fixing scandal. The same issue noted the death of the footballer Ram Bahadur, an East Bengal stalwart who played in the 1960 Rome Olympics and was also a member of the greatest of all Indian soccer sides, which won the title at the 1962 Asian Games in Jakarta. The juxtaposition, one suspects, was not accidental: the footballer's memory was being honoured to shame the players of that other (and it is now being implied) morally inferior game.
The men at India Today would not know it, but actually Ram Bahadur's own favourite sport was cricket. His footballing career ran from 1957 to 1967: but he had played much cricket before those dates, and much cricket after them too.
Ram Bahadur was the son of a chaprassi, or peon, who worked in the Forest Research Institute in Dehra Dun. His closest friend, while growing up, was the son of a distinguished scientist at the same Institute. The patrician and plebeian together formed a club named Sporting Youngsters which was, for many years, the best cricket team in the valley. After practice, the boys would repair for tea and snacks to the stately home of the scientist, a six- room bungalow set in four acres of woodland which overlooked the practice field. I should immediately add a correction here. The other Sporting Youngsters had tea, but not Ram Bahadur. For he was a Chhetri, a hill man from the high valleys of Western Nepal, by genes and culture inclined towards the harder stuff. In these post-practice parties, he would discreetly pour himself a drop or two of Gordon's Dry Gin, and top up the bottle with water. While this was going on, the scientist was away at work, and his wife was in the kitchen. This is a charming story (it was told to me by the scientist's son), but one would love to know its ending. What was the look on the face of the visiting foreign dignitary to whom the drink was finally and officially offered?
The year before I was born Ram Bahadur joined East Bengal. The Calcutta club is chiefly known for its football, but it had decent cricket and hockey teams too. Ram Bahadur played all three games for the club. I never saw him play those other sports, but have some abiding recollections of him on the cricket field. For, as it happened, my father also worked in the Forest Research Institute. And, in December and January, Ram Bahadur would come home to Dehra Dun on holiday, to place his monsoon earnings at the feet of his mother, and to play cricket.
Ram Bahadur was a half-back at football, and a speedy outside left at hockey. At cricket, he would do everything: bat in the middle order, bowl a brisk medium pace, field in the covers or at slip. I remember very clearly a match played at the Indian Military Academy, between IMA cadets and a scratch civilian team. (Like all cricket fields once did, the IMA ground had its pavilion at wide midwicket: this was a red-brick building with a pillared verandah on which tea and sandwiches were served). It much have been 1965 or 1966, about the time of the second Indo- Pakistan war, but the sky this day was cloudless and the sport played was not bloody. I sat in the sun with my father, watching Ram Bahadur, the son of a peon, being toasted by the gentry. He got to 49 with a series of slashing cuts and pulls, each shot accompanied by murmurs of "well played, Sir". To get to 50 he played a ball short to point, set off for a single, was sent back by his over-cautious partner, and run out. He returned to the pavilion to applause and calls of "bad luck, Sir!". Later in the day he gave a spectacular exhibition of fielding, driving away at cover to stop fierce dives struck by beefy and eager cadets.
Ram Bahadur was, I guess, my first cricketing hero, his batting and fielding that day at the IMA my first coherent, consolidated cricketing memory. I was introduced to him over tea and sandwiches, to thus commence three decades of a close, if somewhat, interrupted friendship. After he left East Bengal in 1967, he joined the Oil and Natural Gas Commission. He was sent at first to Assam but, in about 1975, wangled a posting to the Commission's headquarters in Dehra Dun. I met him sometimes on the cricket field - we played for rival clubs - and sometimes off it. He still batted with a keen eye, but the accumulated inches around the waist meant he would no longer field at cover. But he had made himself into a decent wicket-keeper instead.
In 1984, my family finally left Dehra Dun. I went to Ram Bahadur's home to say goodbye. The old sportsman took me around the block, showing me the homes he had built for his sisters. Then he escorted me to his own room, closed the door, and picked up a bat lying in the corner: a brand new bat, smelling sweetly of its first coats of linseed oil. "Pick it up," he urged me, "see how nice the balance is." I did, and concurred with his judgment.
Then Ram Bahadur went to the door, made certain it was shut, and said, in a thrilling whisper: "I paid Rs. 300 for it. But don't tell my missus: I have bluffed her that it was a gift from the Commission." This fellow, fat and 45, was still cheating on his wife but, in this particular case, we may accept that the ends wholly justified the means.
Six months ago, I was in Dehra Dun on work. My meeting ended early, and I went in search of my friend. His home in Panditwari was locked. A neighbour told me that, after his wife's death, Ram Bahadur had moved to his daughter's, who lived "somewhere near Chor Pulia". I reached the bridge of thiefs, and a series of shopkeepers directed me to the Olympian's house. His daughter offered me tea: which I drunk, and (to my surprise) so did he. We spoke, of course, of old times. He told me of a day at the Sporting Youngsters nets, circa 1961, when he had his colleagues in splits with stories of the Village in Rome. The conversations carried over into fielding practice, where the footballer's stories had generated an epidemic, which was not catching. A frustrated captain - the scientist's son - asked the errant member to do a round of the field in punishment. Ram Bahadur did as he was told, but when he returned from his run, he saw that the captain had thrown away bat and ball, and was weeping. "You, you, you are an Olympian" he stammered, "and you still took that round."
"You are still my skipper," answered Ram Bahadur, "and I did disrupt practice, and deserved to be punished."
Without knowing it, Ram Bahadur once did me a huge favour. I was at Palam Airport, returning from a trip overseas, and being harassed by a custom officer who would not believe that the books that burdened my suitcase were to be read by me, and me alone.
The fellow would let me go, till he scanned my passport again, and noticed my place of birth. I am from Dehra Dun, too, he announced. Which part, I asked. Panditwari, he answered. That is the village Ram Bahadur comes from," I said. "Did the officer know him?"
Why not, said the customs man, he is, after all, an Olympian. (kyon nahin - akhir wo to Olympian hain)". I could now depart, for how would he take a bribe from a fellow devotee of our hometown God?
Ram Bahadur was a sporting youngster, and a sporting old man. The world and India Today may know of him only as a footballer - a great footballer - but I was privileged to know him as a cricketer, who taught me lessons in cricketing technique and cricketing morality. I salute him.
Honouring our heroes
BY RAMACHANDRA GUHA
THE World Wide Web is a global and universal technology, but not necessarily a globalising and universalising one. To the contrary, the Web can and has been used to promote local pride and the appreciation of local themes, processes, institutions, and individuals.
In recent weeks, I have made the acquaintance of two websites that focus on the history and lore of two of the loveliest towns in India. The first site is located in the town I was born and raised, Dehradun. The Doon is known to some as a home of elite public schools, and to others as a military centre. But to the more sporting minded, it is known for having produced a stream of outstanding footballers. The site I speak of (www.dehradunfootball.com) focuses on them, on men such as Ram Bahadur and Bir Bahadur, Shyam Thapa and Bhupinder Singh Rawat. Yet, its promoters have also shown an interest in other aspects of their valley's history, in its association with the freedom movement, for example.
The second site is more catholic by definition. This is churumuri.wordpress.com, which is run out of Mysore by a bunch of very talented, if somewhat obsessed Mysoreans. The town was once the capital of one of the two most progressive princely States in India (Baroda being the other one). The colleges that its Maharajas founded and funded produced a stream of outstanding graduates, who went on to play a prominent part in the history of modern India, in the fields of science (say Raja Ramanna), social science (say M.N. Srinivas), literature (say C.D. Narasimhaiah and A.K. Ramanujan), photography (say T.S. Satyan) and music (say Doreswamy Iyengar).
"Churumuri" pays equal attention to Mysore's somewhat glorious past and its sometimes troubled present. It also seeks to link past and present, as in a campaign it has launched to honour the writer who made Mysore known throughout the world, R.K. Narayan. The site mournfully notes that in the city where he long lived, and whose streets and characters he memorialised in a series of stories, there is no recognition of Narayan — no circle, cinema, hall or hostel named after him.
"The issue", writes the editor of "Churumuri", is "about how we remember our icons and legends. And how we remind them to those who will follow us. The issue is about how we perpetuate their memory to all those who enter and pass through our city".
Different views
By honouring R.K. Narayan, the city of Mysore will only be honouring itself. Not surprisingly, the website's campaign has attracted much interested comment. As one reader notes, what was distinctive about Narayan was "the simplicity of his writing. Nothing too complicated. Very few words that assault the brain so much that you need to assault the dictionary". How best can Mysore remember him? The suggestion to name a road after him is quickly, and I believe rightly, rejected. "The problem with naming roads after individuals", writes a Mysorean, "is that over time, the road and the surroundings develop character(istics) contrary to the values of the person after whom it is named. As an example, take a look at all the M(ahatma) G(andhi) roads in India — I am sure even the ashes of this honourable man must be squirming at what goes on along these roads".
One proposal, which I believe might find wide acceptance, is to convert the house that Narayan lived in Yadavgiri — this, I believe, is still in the possession of the family — into a library, reading room, and conference centre. Museums tend to museumise, to render a legacy still and lifeless. However, this scheme would permit the writer's own home to yet be a place where words and ideas are discussed and debated. Another suggestion which caught my fancy is for a train to Mysore to be named (what else!) the "Malgudi Express".
The "Churumuri" campaign is motivated by a proper sense of history, and a proper respect for one of the city's most remarkable residents. But, I am glad to report, it is also motivated by a sense of competitive local patriotism. Karnataka's other great cultural centre, the twin towns of Hubli-Dharwad, has a private bus service named after the poet D.R. Bendre. How then can Mysore treat its singular literary jewel any different?
My reasons
As a regular visitor to Mysore, I support the "honour Narayan" campaign for two reasons. The first is my admiration for the man. (My favourite Narayan novels are Swami and Friends and The English Teacher, these written in two entirely different, and opposed, registers, the comic and the tragic.) The second reason is that I have myself long argued that Indians must do more to remember their artists, writers, scientists and musicians. For what "Churumuri" writes of Mysore is basically true of all our towns and cities: to wit, "If all we have to show to the world are roads, circles, memorials, halls, localities named after two-bit politicians, three-bit goons and four-bit operators, what a pathetic city we will turn out to be".
ramguha@vsnl.com
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