Every day is a new hurdle for the teenage girls from Delhi’s Sangam Vihar who play football–from lack of funds to parental pressure and even clothes. Saloni was recently taunted by neighbours for wearing shorts to her football practice.
“When I left home in the evening, an aunty asked me, ‘You have grown up, why are you still wearing shorts?’” Saloni says. The 18-year-old didn’t care and walked away.
In Sangam Vihar’s ‘Pahadi ilaka’, 4 pm means that Neha, Pooja, Nisha and Shama are getting ready for their ‘recovery session’ at Ruchi Yadav’s house. The girls have an important match coming up. Phones are continuously buzzing. Ice chips have to be picked up from shops and the new jerseys have just arrived from the tailor. There is also a pep talk scheduled before the practice match at 7 pm.
Recovery is a post-match session for low-intensity exercises.
The Sangam Vihar girls are no ordinary school-going kids, they are trained football players. Some of them have been playing for five years, some three. But for the longest time, they lacked funding. Then several families in the locality came together to support the girls. They may come from economically weaker sections, but that doesn’t stop their football dreams.
While the girls get ready for their session, women sew dupattas sitting at their doors. The men are mostly daily wage labourers.
Sometimes the evening food for the girls is cooked at Ruksana’s home, a long-time resident of Sangam Vihar. Ruksana’s 16-year-old sister and 14-year-old daughter Shama are part of the football circle. Kusum’s lawn becomes their classroom for football strategies and Ruchi’s terrace doubles up as the space for their recovery session. Kalpana Devi’s empty second-floor room is used for storing equipment.
Sangam Vihar does not have a designated building or space that the girls can call their football institution. “It’s a school without a building,” says Anirban Ghosh, their coach and co-founder of Khel Khel Mein Foundation.
In 2017, the NGO decided to introduce football as a community sport for the children of Sangam Vihar. It worked. As the tournaments and participation increased, Anirban realised the potential of the sport as a support system for children from Delhi’s marginalised areas.
“We brought down the number of students from 8,000 to 500 so that we could work more closely with the community. And shifted the model from school-based to community-based so that the interaction time can go up,” says Ghosh. It’s a nine-year-long programme now. Children as young as 7-8 years sign up for it.
Ghosh’s Khel Khel Mein Foundation worked on two projects – football in Sangam Vihar and kho kho in Aya Nagar. But the Aya Nagar programme had to be stopped due to the Covid pandemic. “Students dropped out and we were facing problems managing our resources,” says Ghosh.
There are currently 40 children who are part of the football initiative, 70 per cent of whom are girls. Neither parental pressure nor school homework can stop these girls from going to football practice.
“My day starts at 5:30 am when I wake up for school. After school, I eat lunch and run for practice. I finish my homework late at night and go to sleep,” says 16-year-old Julie Kumar.
The routine is hectic, but the girls insist they don’t get tired. “We want to play football,” says Kusum.
The initiative has opened a window for several girls in the team. Nisha Khan’s football talent and achievements have ensured she gets easy admission to schools. There are currently seven national-level football players under 17 from Sangam Vihar and around 14-15 players at state camps.