It is World Cup season again, this time in happy Qatar. And these are days of sheer excitement, of unbounded ecstasy and deep disappointment.
On the way to my village last week, it was a Brazil-Argentina festival of colours I sped through. That was before all those dramatic events --- of so many acclaimed teams falling by the wayside and reputed players breaking into tears --- happened on the field and observed on television screens around the world. All around me, on the tops of jackfruit and mango trees and perched on sky-caressing coconut and date palms, fluttered the flags of the two countries that are thousands of miles away from us, over there in distant South America. So what if we have little or no idea of the history and politics of Brazil and Argentina? Besides, does anyone need history to enjoy as seminal a sports occasion as the World Cup?
So there was I, on the pristine green route to my village, observing all that Bengali love for the two South American teams. Back in the city, it was a profusion of flags, of these two nations again, which each one of us must confront and even look forward to between now and the finals, or so we thought. On social media, the arguments for and against Brazil and Argentina have taken a new and chaotic turn, with the sudden, rather rude rise of teams considered, at least so far, as minnows, upstarts in the eyes of many of our Bengali football aficionados.
How dare they upset all the calculations so carefully made about the superiority of the men from Brasilia, Buenos Aires and even Berlin and walk away with that wicked gleam of triumph in their eyes? Whatever has happened to old-fashioned respect?
This Bengali obsession with the World Cup every four years is remarkable, given that indigenous football of the kind played in Bangladesh in the 1970s through the 1980s is now a thing of the past. That gentlemen's game called cricket has put paid to our football. Imagine the times when Bengalis were obsessed with Mohammadan and Abahani and Wanderers and Brothers Union. Hardly a family was there which did not have at least two members ready to live and then, given the right conditions, die for football.
To be sure, there were the too excited ones, like my father's colleague, who in their frenzy at the stadium and particularly when their favourite teams approached the enemy's goal post, looking about to shoot that ball past the hapless goalkeeper, lifted their feet in huge suspense-driven drama. And just as the ball, in the manner of a bullet, went through that goal post, those feet landed stunning blows on the harmless backs of the co-spectators before them. Loud cries of pain were heard, accompanied by a profusion of apologies from the delirious perpetrator of the kick.
That was our football frenzy back in those cheerfully exciting days, until cricket barged in to ruin that sporting landscape of tradition. But note the irony. Football in Bangladesh may be dead --- and it did die a slow, painful death all the way from the mid 1990s to the mid 2000s --- but it thrives in the world beyond our frontiers.
And since so many of us are ready and willing to be part of that world, ready to suspend our infatuation with cricket for a while, why shouldn't we contribute our share of football passion to the millions out there eking out sleepless nights praying and watching and cursing and cheering, in that order, the teams which run riot on their television screens?
After all, it is not every day that one gets to see some of the greatest players in the world demonstrate their stamina and their skills and the energy in their powerful limbs before a global population. So what is happening in Kyiv is but a war in line with natural and dark human behaviour, a story which is common to all nations.
For me, football has been a curious mix of the interesting and the banal. No, I will confess I do not understand the rules and nuances of the game. But it is exciting to watch it all the same. At one of the World Cups, much to the annoyance and amusement of the children in the family, I rooted for Cameroon. My love for the underdog was behind that move, but those children have since that fateful Cameroon moment scrupulously ignored my views on football or any sport for that matter.
My own promising career in football, which could have been an illustrious one, came to a crashing end sixty years ago when the ball I had kicked into the air simply came down from the sky to crash land on my little schoolboy head. That was when I retired from football. The experience left me with a lifelong love and hate relationship with a headache. The headache is, you are right, my football legacy.
But then there was my maternal uncle, my mama in local parlance, who was a devotee of football all his life. Turan Mama was in his days famous for his skills on the football ground, apart from his music-laden voice which made many a young woman swoon in ecstasy as he sang through the long pastoral nights. At one point, he became part of Dhaka Wanderers, touring the length and breadth of Bangladesh and sending terror into the hearts of the teams arrayed against his.
His life ended in his eighties, ill and confined as he was to bed. But conversations on football with him led to a bolt of energy running right through him. His past overwhelmed his present. And, of course, a dwindling band of ageing football fans yet remember the electric energy which took charge of Turan Mama the moment he stepped out on that field. Their gaze clouds over with a faraway look.
But let us sit back and see what all those brave men --- Messi, Neymar, Ronaldo and what have you --- have been doing in Qatar to keep us Bengalis in thrall to football. Isn't it a healthy feeling, for a change, that for a month most of us will be keeping away from politics through keeping our eagles' eyes focused on football?
Some of us, yours truly for instance, may not comprehend the rules of the game at all. But they know, just like those fanatical night owls, a.k.a. cricket enthusiasts, how to let out a scream, release a polite expletive, jump in the air and even have the tears flow down the cheeks. Football madness is in the air.
