Mohunbagan memories: SPORTSMANSHIP OF BHAICHUNG BHUTIA

Chhering Yonzon, my republica.com : The month of October in Sikkim can be pleasant, a time when the rolling hills wean themselves from the receding monsoon. The mild autumn days call for light pullovers, and colorful shades of hosiery are displayed on Gangtok’s ridges and malls by the hill station’s residents.

It was one such moment in an October afternoon of 1992. The main Palzor stadium in Gangtok had every stand and gallery filled with roaring football spectators watching the prestigious Governor’s gold cup semi-final. A group of school boys in the local team, Sikkim Reds, gave a harrowing time to seasoned footballers from Mohun Bagan, one of the three soccer giants of Kolkata. 

Mohun Bagan, one of the world’s oldest football clubs, carries a proud legacy of football in Bengal since the British colonial heydays of 19th century. As the local amateurs drew intricate dribbling patterns over the dusty field with the ball, the home crowd ruthlessly yelled as the hapless Kolkata professionals were thoroughly beaten in each department of the game.

The keen eyes of Mohun Bagan coach Bhaskar Ganguly, who himself was an ex- captain and goalkeeper of the Indian football team, fell on the sturdy legs of the hill lads; more particularly on the deft feet of a 15-year-old striker with the name of Bhaichung Bhutia.

This boy with his dribbling skills had mesmerized the Mohun Bagan coach during the 90 minutes of play time, the Kolkata coach was in love with Bhaichung’s game. Although the Kolkata team struggled and finally beat the local lads with the help of an extra-time free kick; technically the schoolboys from Gangtok had given a psychological drubbing to the Kolkata professionals. When the match ended and the local crowd deserted the stand, this boy was instantly picked by Mohun Bagan’s mentor and offered a lucrative contract in the plains.

My friend and classmate Bhaichung gave up his board exam. He decided to leave our school’s humble muddy playing field and ventured into the football capital of India with its 120,000 capacity Salt Lake stadium in Kolkata suburbs where he was destined to exhibit his football skills.

Since then, there was no looking back for this diminutive Himalayan Maradona. I still recall reading a letter he had sent to the boys at Tashi Namgyal Academy’s dormitory. In the letter he graphically described his reverse flying kick goal that made JCT Mills the champions at a tournament in New Delhi. He revealed that after lifting the trophy, he could not sleep that night. It felt like a sweet fairy tale to him.

He was affiliated with a couple of top-division clubs in India before settling on the likes of traditional Kolkata power house East Bengal, where he played the longest in red and yellow stripes, and later on in the maroon and green jersey of Mohun Bagan.

Back in those days, we flipped through the pages of Calcutta’s Telegraph in our school library to look at Bhaichung rubbing shoulders with Cheema Okeri in practice sessions. Cheema was the Nigeria-born footballer, the biggest football star in India before Bhaichung took up the mantle from his predecessor.

Bhaichung repeatedly failed class tests. He lost promotion and stayed in the same class, ultimately becoming my junior. He failed in almost every subject, the only subject he passed without much effort was mathematics. He once said that he could pass mathematics as it did not require long study hours. He grasped whatever algebraic or trigonometric concepts he could in the irregular bits and pieces he caught between his U-12 and U-16 football training camps from Bangladesh to Kerala.

He was an extremely intelligent footballer. He played soccer with brain as much as brawns. I remember an inter-house match in which I was the goalie of the opposite team, and surviving 90 minutes of Bhaichung’s onslaught was an ordeal. I ended up conceding half a dozen goals from under my legs and above my head.Although there is no dismissing the abilities of this football prodigy born in a remote village in south Sikkim; fortune was also on his side. He happened to play in the right place at the right time. Just when Indian finance minister Man Mohan Singh opened India’s economy and satellite TVs were starting to break Door Darshan’s monopoly; Bhaichung launched his career with multinational endorsement deals in an unleashed tiger economy. Soon he was a household name in a country where every sport other than cricket is sidelined.

His international club ventures showed mixed results. In 1999 he played for Bury FC, a third division club in Manchester, England. His stint there met with a premature end as he was plagued with knee injuries. He then returned to India and rejoined East Bengal. On a loan from the Kolkata club, he played a few seasons for Perak FA in Malaysia.

He was outstanding in the national team. Under his captaincy, the team won the Nehru Cup and AFC Challenge Cup for India. He lifted SAFF Championship three times. He was India’s most capped player, playing in more than 100 international matches. He received sporting’s highest laurel, the Arjuna award, and also Padma Shri from the President of India. In October 2010, he established Bhaichung Bhutia football schools in Delhi in partnership with Nike. Off the field, he won the reality dance show Jhalak Dikhhla Jaa, but he faced professional contract violation charges from Mohun Bagan for participating in the show. 

In August 2011 he announced his retirement from international football. The Indian soccer fraternity gave a befitting farewell to Bhaichung during his last match in the Indian team against the German giants Bayern Munich. He locked horns against Schwienstieger, Muller and Gomez. Although India lost the match, the spectators in Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium, New Delhi cheered for Bhaichung one last time on the night of 10th January 2012.

He made a full circle and returned to East Bengal at the end of his active club career. He said that he wanted to hang up his boots in the lockers of East Bengal, the club in which he started his football journey as a young lad in the early 1990s.

Now he plays part time football in United Sikkim, the club that he owns and founded to hone the talent of young Sikkim players. A stadium is being built in his name in Namchi, his home town in south Sikkim. He has a flourishing spicy pickle processing business.

Going back to October of 1992, Shah Rukh Khan who was launching his Bollywood career back then had a film released that year, in which he plays a young man leaving Darjeeling to try his luck in the plains. I remember a song in which the actor is shown getting on the toy train and singing goodbye to his hilly brethren. Shah Rukh’s song was also applicable to Bhaichung who was also leaving the hills then to try his luck down in the plains. The song from the movie Raju Ban Gaya Gentleman goes ‘Dil Hai Mera Deewana…Yaaron Meh Toh Chalaa…Meri Manjil Duur Hai…Par Jaana Jaroor Hai…Hey Dosto Alvidaa’

One went on to become India’s biggest film star, the other, India’s biggest foot ball star.