At 74, Kumaresh Saha’s day begins like this. Wake up early, have breakfast, do morning puja — “Kali Ma is with me always,” he says — and head straight for East Bengal Football Club’s practice session. After that, if there is a match of the club’s cricket team at Eden or anyplace else, he goes there. In the evening, if there is any work at the East Bengal tent in the Maidan, he goes there too. “This has been the routine since I opted for voluntary retirement in 2001,” says the former bank employee.
And yet nobody has heard of a Kumaresh Saha in the Maidan. That is the lair of Kalida. Saha says with a chuckle, “Everyone here knows me as Kalida; even a blade of grass.” In the olden days, whenever East Bengal won a title, the responsibility of distributing bhaanrs of rosogolla devolved unto him.
I am meeting Kalida at the Eden Gardens’ lobby. It is evening and a local league match has been called off because of poor light. He has just arrived from the Salt Lake Stadium where East Bengal were practising under coach Alejandro Menendez Garcia. “We have an important I-League match coming up. There is the Derby too,” he says. Of late, and quite understandably, Kalida’s knees cannot cope with the football fan’s frenzied spirit.
He fell in love with the game in the 1950s. “Those days we were in Jessore, now in Bangladesh. My father brought me to Calcutta to watch East Bengal play. I remember watching Ahmed Khan caressing the ball. That’s it, my life changed. After we migrated, I became a regular at the stands. That was 1960-61,” he says.
He has many stories to tell. Like the time he jumped with joy when Tulsidas Balaram scored and he was sitting amongst Mohun Bagan fans. Another day he got carried away and used a cuss word without realising that former East Bengal official, the late Dipak (Paltu) Das, was sitting ahead of him. “Aqueel Ansari with a swerve of his body had opened the face of Mohun Bagan goal. I couldn’t control myself and used a slang,” he recalls biting his tongue in classic embarrassment.
This is not just Kalida’s story. But Kalida’s story is the story of the ubiquitous football fan of Bengal, a creature of impulse, for whom a football match is always much more, and a football club is home and shrine and a way of life.
It is sheer coincidence that the protagonist of Rudraprasad Sengupta’s iconic play, Football, was also called Kali. “Amar naam Kali, loke bole Byomkali. That was the line,” Sengupta recalls. Football was staged for the first time in the 1970s; an adaptation of British playwright Peter Terson’s Zigger Zagger. Sengupta used Terson’s work to explore the angst of the youth of Bengal. “Amidst the gloom of the time, the youth wanted something to cling on to and football was their refuge,” he tells me.
While the protagonist of Zigger Zagger was a Manchester City fan, in Football Kali rooted for East Bengal. Says Sengupta, “In the greenroom on the first day of the play, actor and playwright Ajitesh Bandopadhyay enquired if Mohun Bagan fans would be upset but everyone said it is not about East Bengal or Mohun Bagan.”
Football ran for more than 400 evenings. “Wherever I went, people used to call me Kalida,” Sengupta remembers fondly.
For Sengupta’s Kalida, football was oxygen. The thespian narrates, “In the last scene, Kali is seen working in a factory. The railings of the factory seem like a jail to him, hemming him in. But he has his transistor. East Bengal are playing that day and though he cannot be at the ground, the airwaves transport him.”
I have seen the same glimmer of passion on field. One particular day comes to mind. Year: 1991. Month: August. East Bengal were playing Eastern Railways in a Calcutta Football League match. Braving the rain, spectators stood outside the ticket counters since noon. A man in his 60s, clad in dhuti-panjabi was among them. When the counters opened, the queue started to move at snail’s pace and then came the real challenge for the elder. There was a small nullah that had to be crossed. The younger lot vaingloriously leapt over it. But the elderly man, without any ado, stepped right in and waded his way through it. In dhuti caked with mud and slush he waited the next two hours for the kick-off. That day, East Bengal won the match and the title without conceding a single goal.
It is the same admixture of sentiment and involvement that I hear in Amitava Mallick’s voice. The septuagenarian is a Mohun Bagan supporter. He recalls how during his schooldays he would rush home, stuff his face and leave for the Mohun Bagan ground. His pitch climbs as he talks about Chuni Goswami’s body feint and Sailen Manna’s free-kicks.
Says Ranabir Sengupta, 73, “After East Bengal equalised in the 1966 IFA Shield final against Eastern Railways, I shouted so hard that my friends feared blood would spurt from my mouth. Then there was the 1984 Shield final against Mohun Bagan. After Karthik Seth scored, I cheered so loud that the landlord’s startled daughter dropped a bottle.”
Saumitra Sengupta, a doctor in the UK, is younger to Mallick and Ranabir by a decade and some more, but he shares their passion. In early 2019, when he was visiting Calcutta, he decided to catch an East Bengal versus Indian Arrows I-League match. It was his first time in the stands since he left India in the early 1990s.
Rudraprasad Sengupta’s narration of the golden run of Football follows his expression of deep disappointment of living a much-altered context. And when he says, “Everything has changed. The face of fanaticism is now different from 1977,” I suspect he is talking about politics and football.
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Fancy, a fandom
At 74, Kumaresh Saha’s day begins like this. Wake up early, have breakfast, do morning puja — “Kali Ma is with me always,” he says — and head straight for East Bengal Football Club’s practice session. After that, if there is a match of the club’s cricket team at Eden or anyplace else, he goes there. In the evening, if there is any work at the East Bengal tent in the Maidan, he goes there too. “This has been the routine since I opted for voluntary retirement in 2001,” says the former bank employee.
And yet nobody has heard of a Kumaresh Saha in the Maidan. That is the lair of Kalida. Saha says with a chuckle, “Everyone here knows me as Kalida; even a blade of grass.” In the olden days, whenever East Bengal won a title, the responsibility of distributing bhaanrs of rosogolla devolved unto him.
I am meeting Kalida at the Eden Gardens’ lobby. It is evening and a local league match has been called off because of poor light. He has just arrived from the Salt Lake Stadium where East Bengal were practising under coach Alejandro Menendez Garcia. “We have an important I-League match coming up. There is the Derby too,” he says. Of late, and quite understandably, Kalida’s knees cannot cope with the football fan’s frenzied spirit.
He fell in love with the game in the 1950s. “Those days we were in Jessore, now in Bangladesh. My father brought me to Calcutta to watch East Bengal play. I remember watching Ahmed Khan caressing the ball. That’s it, my life changed. After we migrated, I became a regular at the stands. That was 1960-61,” he says.
He has many stories to tell. Like the time he jumped with joy when Tulsidas Balaram scored and he was sitting amongst Mohun Bagan fans. Another day he got carried away and used a cuss word without realising that former East Bengal official, the late Dipak (Paltu) Das, was sitting ahead of him. “Aqueel Ansari with a swerve of his body had opened the face of Mohun Bagan goal. I couldn’t control myself and used a slang,” he recalls biting his tongue in classic embarrassment.
This is not just Kalida’s story. But Kalida’s story is the story of the ubiquitous football fan of Bengal, a creature of impulse, for whom a football match is always much more, and a football club is home and shrine and a way of life.
It is sheer coincidence that the protagonist of Rudraprasad Sengupta’s iconic play, Football, was also called Kali. “Amar naam Kali, loke bole Byomkali. That was the line,” Sengupta recalls. Football was staged for the first time in the 1970s; an adaptation of British playwright Peter Terson’s Zigger Zagger. Sengupta used Terson’s work to explore the angst of the youth of Bengal. “Amidst the gloom of the time, the youth wanted something to cling on to and football was their refuge,” he tells me.
While the protagonist of Zigger Zagger was a Manchester City fan, in Football Kali rooted for East Bengal. Says Sengupta, “In the greenroom on the first day of the play, actor and playwright Ajitesh Bandopadhyay enquired if Mohun Bagan fans would be upset but everyone said it is not about East Bengal or Mohun Bagan.”
Football ran for more than 400 evenings. “Wherever I went, people used to call me Kalida,” Sengupta remembers fondly.
For Sengupta’s Kalida, football was oxygen. The thespian narrates, “In the last scene, Kali is seen working in a factory. The railings of the factory seem like a jail to him, hemming him in. But he has his transistor. East Bengal are playing that day and though he cannot be at the ground, the airwaves transport him.”
I have seen the same glimmer of passion on field. One particular day comes to mind. Year: 1991. Month: August. East Bengal were playing Eastern Railways in a Calcutta Football League match. Braving the rain, spectators stood outside the ticket counters since noon. A man in his 60s, clad in dhuti-panjabi was among them. When the counters opened, the queue started to move at snail’s pace and then came the real challenge for the elder. There was a small nullah that had to be crossed. The younger lot vaingloriously leapt over it. But the elderly man, without any ado, stepped right in and waded his way through it. In dhuti caked with mud and slush he waited the next two hours for the kick-off. That day, East Bengal won the match and the title without conceding a single goal.
It is the same admixture of sentiment and involvement that I hear in Amitava Mallick’s voice. The septuagenarian is a Mohun Bagan supporter. He recalls how during his schooldays he would rush home, stuff his face and leave for the Mohun Bagan ground. His pitch climbs as he talks about Chuni Goswami’s body feint and Sailen Manna’s free-kicks.
Says Ranabir Sengupta, 73, “After East Bengal equalised in the 1966 IFA Shield final against Eastern Railways, I shouted so hard that my friends feared blood would spurt from my mouth. Then there was the 1984 Shield final against Mohun Bagan. After Karthik Seth scored, I cheered so loud that the landlord’s startled daughter dropped a bottle.”
Saumitra Sengupta, a doctor in the UK, is younger to Mallick and Ranabir by a decade and some more, but he shares their passion. In early 2019, when he was visiting Calcutta, he decided to catch an East Bengal versus Indian Arrows I-League match. It was his first time in the stands since he left India in the early 1990s.
https://www.telegraphindia.com/sport/fancy-a-fandom/cid/1739562
Mehtab's autobiography will probably stir up some controversy regarding his time at EB.