From The Latest Issue: The Trawler Of Sports

When the seagulls follow the trawler, it is because they think sardines will be thrown into the sea. — Eric Cantona, French former footballer, 1995

It is a big fixture. The Electricity Board Football Club is playing the Military Cantt Football Club at the Gandhi Maidan stadium in Gaya. The former comprises players employed under the sports quota at the Electricity Board, while the latter comprises young military men training at the Officers' Training Academy.

The terraces of the stadium reverberate with the single, unbroken chant: “DhanDhanDhanDhan…”

On the pitch, the left winger, Dhananjay of Electricity Board Football Club, is charging down the flank. Rain has slicked the ground and mud slings from his boots as he paces. Defenders slide in at his feet and he survives the skirmishes. He gallops on; the drumming is for him—louder and more insistent—as he closes in on his target. Any moment now, he might cut inside and place a sweet curler ball past the goalie, low in the bottom of the mesh with a satisfying “whoosh!”

If the stadium had a roof, it would’ve blown off at that point. DHAN-DHAN-DHAN-DHAN, the crowd roars for Dhananjay. The sound engulfs everything.

I was around six or seven years old when my Uncle Shahid, a veteran football enthusiast and now a resident of Mumbai, first recounted this local tale to me. It is perhaps his story—or his candid pleasure in narrating it—that I now date as the dawn of sport taking a hold on me. Evidently, much of the enjoyment of the spectacle lies not in the clash and its verdict but in the stirring emotions ranging from murderous rage to gentle whimsy. Sport, to be sure, affects life directly.

At some places, the relationship sport maintains with life reaches remarkable extremes. A chef I know in Delhi shared with me a crumb that brings his profession and sport together in Kolkata. “The results of the Kolkata Derby directly control the fish market pricing,” he said. “The day Mohun Bagan wins, chingri (prawns) prices on the following day go up; when East Bengal wins, it’s the illish (hilsa) prices that shoot up,” he added.

To understand this curious entwinement between sport and the market, one must return to the history of the Kolkata Derby and its belligerents, Mohun Bagan and East Bengal. While the former has long been synonymous with the Ghotis, prawn-inclined urban settlers, the latter is made of the Bangals, migrants who arrived in West Bengal from the river-rich districts of eastern Bengal, present-day Bangladesh. Naturally, the Mohun Bagan supporters share a penchant for prawns—urban and market-friendly, while East Bengal relishes in the pleasures of hilsa. On Derby day, a victory warrants an indulgence just as a defeat withholds it. Prices rise and plummet, not due to the availability of fish but because auspicious indulgence overrules reason, and the market keeps an eye out for these permutations.

Shaunak Ghosh, a sports journalist from Kolkata, once described to me his experience of the same Kolkata Derby as a first-timer. After the final whistle, as he made his way back home, Ghosh told me he noticed “a man sitting outside the Salt Lake Stadium selling pieces of bricks by the bundle for Rs 5 each,” he said. “I later learnt it was for the use of spectators to throw at the opposition fans after the match was over,” he said.

Funny as they are, some of these sports quips and anecdotes tend to outlast the matches themselves. One such anecdote was shared with me by a friend, Shamik Banerjee, a Delhi-based journalist and a devoted sports enthusiast. It dates back to 2002, when the FIFA World Cup was held in Asia for the first time. In those days, television sets were still rare in his Bengal town, but his uncle—who lived across the street—had bought a colour TV expressly for the tournament. Each evening, neighbours gathered at his house to watch the matches.

“My best memory from that World Cup was, obviously, the final—Brazil vs Germany at Yokohama,” Banerjee told me. Following in his father's footsteps, he supported Brazil and, like most of the world that summer, pledged allegiance to Ronaldo Nazario (and his iconic haircut). On the day of the final, the house was full. “My father got two roses from a plant in our backyard and placed them on the TV top for good luck,” recounted Banerjee.

The first half passed without incident. Ten minutes of the second half went the same way. That was when his father, struck by a sudden conviction, widened the gap between the two flowers on the TV top. The logic, as he explained it, was simple: widen the gap, open the goalposts, invite a breakthrough. The result? Minutes later, Ronaldo scored. Then he scored again. Brazil were champions.

“A lot of time has passed since,” Banerjee said. “My dad doesn’t watch football anymore. But that day made me a football fan—for the first time, and for the rest of my life."

With these thoughts, one can read the quote by Cantona less as provocation and more as a metaphor. As the trawler of sport trundles along, we—loyal seagulls—hover over it, awaiting something worth pecking at: heartfelt exchanges, passing absurdities, or the old, well-timed lampoon.

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