Chik er Ball (Ball made using Plastic Bags)
They say, when you touch a cord, it makes a sound. They say, when you drop a ball, it bounces. But not every type of ball. Make a ball with bacha-kucha plastic bags like the one below, you try to bounce it even on the hardest surface, it will not bounce.
Let say, you made such a ball of size, like No. 3 football (soccer ball). And you are playing during monsoon season, soaked in mud and water, 5kg weight and you are playing barefoot.
This is the story of my cowboy friend Kangla, short height, would hardly talk to anyone unless its really a needie needy one.
Kangla was 11/12 years of age then. We used to hire him to play for our paDa team. Those days One-Day-Tournaments (now too) were very popular in rural parts of Bengal. There would be 16 teams from different villages complete in knockout play, 10min + 10min and final would be 15min + 15min. It is more like a picnic day out and fun. Now imagine, during prize distribution 15 loosing team vs 1 winner ;-) #huddaHuddyByapar. As a spectator you would see many head and leg injuries, but some of them used to be like inner-head or dil-pe-le injuries (when another player do head-and-torso using verbs and adjectives).
{Many of us must have criticized Zidane, for so and so reason. But somehow I could not, somehow I felt him. He is still one of the best player I would know}
Coming back to Kangla, he was from a poor family, I used to know little bit about their hardship from another of my cowboy friend Mukulkanti (Bhuta). One day we had a game with our neighboring village, and Kangla did not show up. So we started playing with 8 players in our side in a 9-9 format game.
They scored 2 goals in the first half. Now, can you imagine during half time break, who was in our eyes ;-). Even Mukul could not say a word other than, “Uwake eibare aath annao dibou nai, aar uwar paler garu gulaner khur bhyange dibyo, biDain... biDain...”.
Oh boy! Kangla arrived 5 min after the start of 2nd half. It was like a Brust-of-Energy came form somewhere and we believed we could win. And actually we did! 3-2!, Kangla scoring 2 of them.
We hold Kangla on our shoulders and then the birthday bumps. He was so ashamed that he almost cried and refused to take Solo ana from us. Later we presented him a pack of chanachur. On that day he was late because one of his cow was missing from the group, and he had to go out for searching, otherwise... you know what! :-)
Now I told the story of Kangla, but who would tell the story of Subodh Hemram, Ninu Murmu, Bikash Maji (!), Parimal, and many others...
Comments