Hosting the under-17 World Cup is a chance for India to become a football nation
On October 6, an Indian national football team will make its debut in a World Cup finals. India is hosting the under-17 World Cup finals, and our competition will include Brazil, Germany, Spain, Mexico, France and England. India’s group contains the United States, Colombia and Ghana. It will be an upset, maybe even a miracle, should we make it to the round of 16. The slim shoulders of these teenagers—Christians being fed to the lions of world football—will have to bear lightly the dead weight of Indian football's failure, its considerable but inglorious history, its well-founded inferiority complex and its recent revival as glitzy entertainment for the urban middle-class TV viewer. This new breed of Indian football fan, raised on cricketing success and a newly belligerent national mood, might not have much patience for failure.
India might be a footballing backwater but it has a distinguished history. The Durand Cup is one of the world’s oldest knockout tournaments, behind only the FA Cup and the Scottish Cup. In 1911 Mohun Bagan won the IFA Shield, the world’s fourth oldest football tournament, playing barefoot against East Yorkshire Regiment. On the day, it was perhaps nothing more than a tweaked nose for the British empire, a rare opportunity for the subjugated to laugh at their oppressors; in retrospect it seems like a blow struck in the name of inevitable independence. Those 11 men were freedom fighters.
Esta historia es de la edición October - December 2017 de The Indian Quarterly.
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The Image-Maker
Sukumar Ray’s most vivid images were saved for his classics of nonsense verse, but his singular eye, writes Nabarupa Bhattacharjee, found its earliest expression in photography
The Nawab's Last Sigh
Rudely awakened by the fact of independent India, an aristocrat in Meerut clung to his past. Now, he tells Sunaina Kumar, all he has left are his memories of a glorious age.
The Guest
Vaiyavan is the nom de plume of MSP Murugesan. Born in 1936, he did sundry jobs before obtaining postgraduate degrees by correspondence and then served as an English and Tamil teacher till his retirement in 1996. His writing career began in 1956. Multifaceted and prolific, he has to his credit a long list of short story collections, novels, plays, literary essays, poems and children’s stories. He has won several awards including Tamil Nadu government awards for best book on culture (1982) and best science book (1992) and the Malcolm Adiseshiah award for active participation in neo-literacy activities (1996). In his short stories and novels, Vaiyavan revels in a zest for life. Humaneness is the hallmark of his work, as the pain and pleasure, trials and tribulations of people in different rungs of society are described in minute detail. —CGR
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The Art Scene
For the new kid on the block, it certainly has pedigree. The Centre for Con-temporary Art, housed within Delhi’s Bikaner House complex, finally opened its portals to welcome art aficionados during this year’s edition of the India Art Fair. Nature Morte was invited to stage the centre’s much-awaited inaugural show, an opportunity the gallery found too irresistible to pass up. The ambitious exhibition it mounted, The Idea of the Acrobat, occupied both floors of the recently renovated building and brought together the works of a dozen well known artists in a multitude of media. The line-up included Bharti Kher, Atul Dodiya, Dayanita Singh, Shilpa Gupta, Ayesha Singh, Khyentse Norbu and LN Tallur to name but a few.
Long, Long Ago
Arundhuti Dasgupta and Utkarsh Patel recount obscure creation myths from around the world, many echoing each other
Family Business
AT THE DINDUKKAL BUS DEPOT, the abortionist pushed her way through the crowd thronging the bus and finally managed to board it. She placed her travel bag beside her on the seat, calling out to her niece to hurry up. The young woman renewed her efforts to break free of the tangle of limbs and claim the seat reserved for her.
A Goan Childhood
Fragments of memory of a time long gone, from a life lived far away. By Selma Carvalho
