Deeply in love with a game few care about

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: They know what it means to be playing cycle polo in a country where the number of its followers might be much much smaller than the little-sized, orange-coloured ball they play with.  They know what it takes to receive a deadly mis-hit from the polo stick on their head or face and bear the sting for days. They know how it pains bitterly and bleeds profusely when their skin peels off like an onion after they lose their balance and fall off the bicycle, banging their body hard on the soiled ground. More than all these pains which they call ‘part of the game’, the six lads based in the city know deeply how much they love this game of cycle polo.Yaseer N, Anfar J, Althaf S, Thameem M S, Anvar A and Suhail, all members of the state junior cycle polo team, are in fact so serious about this game that they don’t even bother their parents for the sake of their interest. They play a tough game and they do it the hard way.  Their shoes are replaced every two weeks. Their cycles are taken for repair quite often. All these means money and the lads pedal their way ahead right from early morning, precisely 4 am.  On weekends and on holidays, they turn newspaper boys in the morning and in the evening they can be found selling out stationery in a shop or chicken in a poultry farm.  In the middle, they spend two hours practising at Poojappura ground and after a hasty shower they brisk off to their schools for their lessons.  ‘’We can’t ask our parents for money. There are two reasons; one, they have never liked this game and two, they can’t afford it,’’ says Anfar, who was the captain of the sub-junior state team that won the national sub-junior cycle polo championship held last year. The rest of the boys were the members of the state team that won the junior national school meet also held in 2010. Though they have glorious reasons to hold their heads high before their parents, these boys say that they are yet to be appreciated in their homes.  But they have no complaints. ‘’This is a game which seldom gets appreciated.  Hence, there is no point in saying whether our parents are interested in our glories. Also, we know that they have other serious matters to care about,’’ say the boys, many of their parents being daily wage labourers. The boys have not, however, disappointed their hardworking parents in terms of their academics. Of the group, Althaf grabbed A+ for all the subjects in tenth standard, while his friends are no dimwits with the textbooks either.  No matter how tired they are, after the practise, they will be present in school on time.   Ask them about the future and the answer would like be an aimless swish of the stick. ‘’We don’t know really. We just want to play more games.  Maybe it could secure us a job. Whatever it is, we simply want to carry on with cycle polo,’’ says Thamim.