Friday 11 December 2015

Somersaulting Football

How many of you like football? You see, in my college, people are crazy about it. There will often be shouting matching about which club is best or which player should win an award. I personally support a club for which I don't really need to fight a lot for: Bayern Munich. Since that club doesn't have much competition in Germany itself, i don't need to participate in screaming matches as much. But when the competitions between clubs from another country like Real Madrid or Barcelona take place, I have to enter to defend the honour of my great club . I'm just kidding. I never enter these pointless competitions. I mean, does anyone's shouting at the top of their voice that Aston Villa is the best make it the best? Ofcourse not. If that would be the case, screamers would be ruling the world.

But you see, these screaming matches are actually nothing compared to the ones we have while playing football in the hostel. In the campus, there are a three grounds available. People play football, hockey and cricket in them. I don't really like cricket as its quite dull. Only two people play actively while other just sit or stand hoping the ball would come to them. And hockey, well that's just downright scary. I mean you run half bent among people carrying wooden sticks and a ball hard enough to smash skull three times over. Just a little false move and the ball or stick could end up in any part of your body. Only the goalie is safe. With that heavy armour and padding, I bet the guy could stop an AK-47 bullet. Just kidding. See, these fields are always crowded so we play in the space provided in the hostel itself. These are a few small fields with volleyball and badminton nets present. According to the authorities, we are not supposed to play anything else in there. But who listens to them anyway? So we play football there. Nobody plays volleyball of badminton in there, which I actually find quite nice. See, in my mind, volleyball means hot girls in bikini playing on the beach. Now if I see some sweaty dudes play it, I'll have nightmare for the next few decades.

This is a narration of one of the most horrific football we ever played. By horrific, I mean a lot of shouting and curse words. So this one day, my gang except Sumit and 5 other guys from nearby corridors assembled in one of the small fields to play football. We divided into teams of 7 each and started the match. My team consisted of me, Tarak, Karan, Garv, Vicky, Shaurya and Anil. Shaurya is a guy not from our wing. I played right back. First few minutes were quite normal. No one scored any goals but several attempts were made. Then, one of the guys named Arnav charged towards the goal from my right. So, I ran to intercept him. As I came infront of him, he tried to cross me by going left. I extended my feet and caught the ball with my leg. Due to his momentum, he tripped over the ball and fell down. I kicked the ball to Karan, who was playing centre forward in our team. But then, Arnav started to shout at me. He started to say that I had committed a foul and that it was a free kick. My whole team defended my saying that he fell down tripping over the ball and it was his fault, not mine. Few players from his team joined in too. He did not take that quite well.
He said, “Fine, play with fouls. You guys don’t know anything about football.”
None of us lost our cool and we continued the game.
After about 20 minutes, we were up by 2 goals. Until now, Kartik has been their goalkeeper. But that changed now. He came in front and Saras substituted him. Now I have mentioned that Kartik is quite non-violent and peaceful. But all of that doesn't apply when he plays football. He plays defence and is extremely aggressive. It’s now that he hits people or fouls a lot. It’s his running style that scares the shit out of even the best players. He runs towards the enemy player like the mad bull runs at the matador. If I see him running towards me, I just kick the ball in general direction of my teammates. I am really scared that if he hits me, I’ll lose a few ribs.
Vicky started charging towards the opponent’s goal. Seeing him with the ball, Kartik charged at him. Now Vicky is a guy of small thin built. So I wondered in how many pieces would he break if Kartik, with is sturdy body and his mad charge hit him. I guess Vicky went through the same thought process. But he did not panic. He increased his pace and ran to meet head on with Kartik. This looked like the scene in Fast and Furious 7 where the Deckard Shaw and Dom speed their cars towards each other and then ram them. Just once thing was different in the whole scene. At the very end, Vicky moved towards the left quickly, dodging Kartik and his tackle and went ahead to score a goal. We all cheered loudly, obviously happy that we now had a 3 goal lead. But when Vicky turned towards us, his face looked like he had just escaped death. Well it was understandable. My whole team broke into a laugh.
Towards the end of the match, while we still were maintaining our 3 goal lead, Arnav charged again, this time from the left. Tarak was defending this position. He is a very good defender with a powerful kick and sturdy build. When Tarak approached him, he held out his hand, pushing Tarak away a bit so he could move smoothly from the area. But this was an obvious foul and Tarak called it. But Arnav did not agree with him and kept moving forward. The reply that he gave was, “Don’t be a wuss.”

Judging by what happened next, I don’t think Tarak took that reply well. He put out one of his legs infront of Arnav, who tripped over it and went somersaulting down on the ground. Boy was that a sight! It was hilarious and I and Karan laughed really hard. Few of us were worried he might have broken something but gladly, he hadn’t. Once he recovered from his fall, the guy got up and went ahead to hit Tarak, shouting all kinds of swear words he had learnt in his lifetime. It was no surprise that a fight would break out. But Karan and Vicky interfered at the right time, pulling Arnav and Tarak away. Arnav still kept trying to hit Tarak until two of his wing mates, Shaurya and Gautam took him away. But that did not stop the verbal wars. All kinds of insults flew from both guys. Some of them were horrible, and some were outright funny. Tarak called Arnav boiled flat blob and cry baby while Arnav shouted bloody drunk pig and wimpy moustache. While the fight was serious, I Anil Karan and Sumit couldn’t stop ourselves from laughing. He insults were hilarious. Arnav has never played with us ever since. But Gautam and Shaurya sometimes join us. We always have a good laugh remembering this game.



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