Village Girls vs. City Men

I woke up on Saturday morning and saw a message from my colleague, Raunak, informing me about a French Embassy hosted charity football tournament taking place at The British School in central Delhi. Since I knew that we didn’t have a team registered I wasn’t that interested in heading down there to just watch other past their prime people play football. Then he told me that the young girls from the YUWA India program would be there and playing in the men’s division and I knew that it was something I couldn’t miss.


I’m so happy I took the trip down to the tournament. It was a perfect afternoon full of fun, food, football and the future. I ran into a number of friends down at the grounds and was simply amazed by how many people in Delhi are enjoying their weekends on the football pitch contributing to various charities while representing corporates and NGOs. The US Embassy even had a team and I realized that somehow or another I’m really missing out on a whole other side of Delhi living.

My jealousy and insecurity lasted for a bit, but quickly vanished as soon as I heard the YUWA girls were playing on pitch #3. I went over to the pitch to see an incredible site. These 10-12 year old skinny village girls were playing against 30-35 year old well-built city men…and both sides were playing hard. I was mesmerized by the fact that the only people who didn’t think it was crazy that these girls were up against monsters were the girls on the field.

It was quite a humbling day for me. I feel small compared to people like YUWA India founder, Franz Gastler, who has committed his entire life to live in the village to train and educate these young girls. I also feel small compared to the YUWA girls who didn’t complain about lack of nutrition, lack of proper infrastructure, 3rd class travel from Jharkhand to Delhi or the fact that all 20 of them were staying together in a 1 bedroom Delhi apartment; they just saw a pitch, goals and a ball and got out there played hard. Very hard and with a sense of passion you don’t see in most professionals footballers these days.

Its days like this when my choice to spend the rest of my life working in football development is validated, yet I’m reminded that I can be doing so much more to make a difference. These reminders are nice every once in awhile.







Comments

  1. JamFebruary 22, 2012 at 8:54 AM

    Thank you for sharing this-what a beautiful example of passion and purpose.

    ReplyDelete

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