Can there be a personal football? If so, I have something similar. During my playing days, I always liked football more than cricket; later, I had no other option but to play shuttle badminton. All were fun, but football rose above all others.
I had gone to the Kozhikode stadium only a few times. Once,
Inder Singh was playing. He stopped the ball when it reached him from the sky, and
the ball became a pet animal tied to his feet. At first, he moved the ball
towards his own post, then made a U-turn, ran fast, dribbled a few players, aimed
at the goalpost, and shot. It was a goal.
I heard of Pele but could not watch much of his play. Then
came Maradona. He did what Inder Singh did, but on a scale and in art that was
exponentially greater. For some time, football lived in me for the love of
Maradona’s dribbling and leaping beyond the world. Then came Messi. I saw in
him the cumulative progression of what I saw in Inder Singh and Maradona.
Messi, too, was taken by age, though his brain still plays and is improving. I
remember what one of the greatest cellists said in his nineties, when he was
asked why he was still practising, “I am still improving.”
Mukundanunni
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