What does football mean to us, to a third-world country with so-called growing GDP, when we are losing our fields to giant companies and mining barons? Is it our only destiny to cheer for other countries? Football is a dream, a power of emancipation from poverty but with lost fields and poverty, Indians only can watch football on mobile or TV screens far from the ground.
Glued to the four-inch screen
He's kicking the pillow
Fisting up in joy
Scratching head in despair
All in a room of
a thousand square feet flat.
He had a large green field
in his backyard that
his father has sold to
a giant shopping mall.
Pass the ball
Pass the ball
He was shouting
His friend kicked the ball
and then —
Bang!
When a country is at war
Mines are more abundant than footballs!
(Somewhere in Tosa Maidan, Ukraine or Palestine)
The father is on a buying spree
He bought an Argentina jersey
for himself
and a Brazil jersey for his son.
He has bought a sack of chips
and a carton of cold drinks.
32 countries 64 matches
He needs at least 250 packets!
Two packets each per match
For Binge watch!
He is gasping for breath
The son is sitting at the counter
He can't even walk a meter
Walking with a 70 kg paunch is a hard task indeed!
Messi/ Messi/ Messi
Missed penalty/cheers/dead silence.
The jersey is dangling from a hanger.
Drip/drip/drip
The sun has many holes/
But only he can see through the holes
of the tin roof/
Hunger is defeated in
the joy of ninety minutes.
Police firing stops in Dhaka.
Empty stomach grumbles out -
G-O-A-L!
Grapefruit was their Nike ball.
Pass - pass - pass
One screamed at another
11 or 5
Flexible in numbers.
Then the dreamers found uranium
under the tortoise's belly.
The fields became the tailing ponds
grapefruit became a childhood story.
All are displaced -
ball, players, tortoises, trees and Adivasis.
The sarkar and the mining barons
are the winners.