Dribbling their way to a brighter future – football

Until a few years ago, 15-year-old Anjali Kumari, of Choma village, used to spend her days doing household chores, cooking and cleaning. It was only when she started playing the beautiful game of football did she start garnering ambitions of making it big in life.

Unlike other girls of her age, she did not go to school and laboured along with her three sisters. However, one afternoon, in May 2016, she saw some girls playing football in a nearby field in the village. Despite being a shy girl by nature, the sport appealed so strongly to Kumari that she hesitantly approached them and asked if she could play. In the days that followed, she started visiting the ground on a daily basis.

Football, soon, turned into a refuge from the drudgery of daily chores for Kumari.

During one such football game, Rahul Singh, a district level football player, spotted the amateur footballers and took six girls, including Kumari, under his wing. Singh taught the girls how to dribble the ball and shoot. “Over the next three months, more girls from Choma started accompanying Kumari for football sessions. The girls would come for practice every day and not miss even one day,” said Singh.

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In the months that followed, Kumari and her fellow players came in contact with Colonel (retired) Pradeep Kumar Chowdhri, a football enthusiast, who took the girls under his mentorship and along with coach Rahul, expanded the team to form the Choma Eagles, a group of 40 girls. The players are now being groomed in an academy run by Chowdhri and are nurturing their dreams of making it big in football, having already won several tournaments.

Although the girls are now making headway on the field, life off the field posed many problems. Coming from conservative families, they struggled to get approvals for travel and wearing the jersey and shorts.

Kumari, too, faced resistance from her family members. After a few days of practice, Kumari’s coach bought her a team uniform and asked her to wear it if she wanted to continue playing. “I had never worn anything but a salwar kameez. For me to be one of the girls was a difficult jump,” said Kumari, whose father and mother work as a mason and domestic help, respectively.

After much convincing, Kumari’s parents relented, but on the condition that they would accompany her. “For a few days, my mother came to the ground. When she saw only girls playing football, she felt relieved and left me to continue my practice by myself,” said Kumari.

Kumari lives with her parents in a one-room slum, where she now juggles household chores and football practice. “My father used to play with me in the small room that we live in. We would practice with a plastic ball that I had made out of rubber bands. My father would throw the ball and I would always catch it, without dropping it once,” said Kumari. That’s how she became a goalkeeper of the Choma Eagles.

MAKING OF THE TEAM

The field in Choma where the girls played was also frequented by Chowdhri. A football enthusiast, 55-year-old Chowdhri asked Singh if he could join the team and play with them. When Chowdhri started playing with the team in 2016, there were 12 girls who played regularly. He expanded the team and set up an academy for underprivileged girls to play football.

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“I loved playing football during my service days. When I saw these girls playing football, I joined them. However, I wanted to do much more than just play the game. So, I thought to myself — why not form an academy and try to provide the best facilities to the girls?” said Chowdhri, who played football for his unit for 23 years until an accident in Ladakh forced him to into premature retirement and ended his dream of playing professional football.

The team came to be known as Choma Eagles since the girls came from the village Chauma, near Palam Vihar. Currently, there are 40 players, aged 12-18, mostly from underprivileged families, in the team. “I don’t take a penny from these girls. Till now, I have spent around ₹1 lakh towards buying nets, gloves, jerseys and other equipment,” said Chowdhri.

The team has gone from strength to strength over the last couple of years. In 2019, they were district champions in the school-level tournament organised by the Haryana Education department in the Under-17 and the Under-19s categories.

FOR A BRIGHTER FUTURE

For Anita, the first choice striker of the team, football has been life-changing in more than one way. The 14-year-old started going to school since joining Choma Eagles, as she and other girls were admitted to a government school first and later, a private school.

“What I didn’t know was that if I wanted to play football with the girls, I had to study. My mother works as a domestic help, cleaning utensils in people’s houses. I want to change all that,” said Anita.

The girls from Choma village continue to face challenges, such as switching to an English medium school, but continue to blow them away just like opposition defences.

Savita, who plays as a winger, said that she had a hard time adjusting to the private school in 2018. “Startled faces and muffled laughs greeted us when we sat in the classroom. We learned to speak English; none of my family members even know a word of the language,” said Savita, who continues to do household chores after returning home from school.

In addition to school, the girls are also given lessons in English by Chowdhri’s wife, Anjana Chowdhri, in a small classroom set up in the basement of her house. “My aim is to make the girls self-sufficient. Teaching them English is one step in making them independent, so that they can go into the society and get work to support their families,” said Anjana, adding that the girls were also being taught to operate computers.

Football, coupled with additional lessons in school, has provided the girls with a new sense of confidence. Laxmi, another football player, a class 12 student, says that she dreams of becoming a doctor in the future. “My parents have never stopped me from playing football. They always encourage me. I was shy by nature, so, stepping out on the football field was a challenge for me,” said Laxmi.

The striker, part of the Haryana senior national women’s team, said that earlier, she would walk to the ground with her eyes down. “I had no confidence. I used to be so scared that if anyone asked me about anything, I would just run away,” she said.

She said that winning matches changed her world view. “Slowly, I started gaining confidence. I have now started looking at people in their eyes and greet elders too,” said Laxmi.