yesterday, i attended the Murli Deora football matches, held for all schools in Mumbai. these are matches sponsored by the erstwhile politician and many other generous donors. they provided football jerseys and football shoes free of cost to all. its free for all and anyone can participate. the best thing about this tournament was that you could be playing against any school. there are no groups based on the popularity of the school or the market value of that school. so no where is the great academic divide more evident than during such tournaments.
on one side we had a school like Cathedral whose U-14 team looked like it was fed on Bheem's diet. and opposite them you had a barely 3 feet tall players from a municipality school in Worli. the entire C-team was in Nike shoes while our worlites were in spikes provided by the sponsors. just looking at them stand for the toss was amazing... the minions vs the giants, the Davids vs the Goliaths, the lilliputs vs the Gullivers, the real face of mumbai vs the 'head-in-ipad' crowd. finally the game began and not once did the minions give any space to the giants. not once did i feel that they were throwing away the match. not once did they think, "jaane de na yaar, appun ko toh sirf free frooti aur samosa se matlab hai boss." even the C-team was a bit taken aback. they assumed this would be a walk-over but hell no! you bet your jockey-clad ass, the VIP underwear aur baniyan was here to whoop it. being the lilliputs they sneaked in every available opening. they took every hook they had and tried to throw it over Gulliver. after a harrowing 20 mins, the giants realized that they need to turn the tide in their favour (like they always do) and systematically broke down every defense that David had on offer. i guess they must have used their 'trained-for-harvard' brains to defeat the 'worli galli football'. i wish the result would have been different but alas.... that is life. i dont grudge the giants their victory, they were by far the better team. but i thoroughly enjoyed seeing them break into a sweat caused by these lilliputians. but i guess they dont sweat haan... thats too LS.
so to cut a long sunny story short, i think this enterprise was worth it. it happens every year. good on you Mr. Deora. i guess not all apples are rotten.
as for my boys, dont ask me whether they won or not. they were too busy watching the girls play football. so you can imagine the result.