Memories #9 - A different kind of a 'Challenge'

“Today we again called a challenge during our games period against 6B. We played hard but lost by 3-0 they have some very good players like CA,Bijo and Joshua among them. We are definitely going to win next time”

This is an excerpt from my daily journal which I had written almost a decade and a half back. The context of the piece is a football game between my class 6 A and the other class followed by my musings at the end of the day. Since both the divisions have the games period at the same time it was kind of like a ritual that one class would challenge the other for a game of football. I wouldn’t agree with it then but in hindsight I definitely feel that we were the weaker of the two but always played with the heart to make up for the deficit in talent. Boy once in a blue moon we used to win and our elation would make us feel on top of the world. This continued until we parted ways until class 10.

It is quite amusing to recollect another instance from my journal in the 7th standard. We were asked to write a composition on ‘My favourite game’, literally everyone in the class wrote about this ‘Challenge’. Our English teacher who also happens to be our class teacher the effervescent Mrs Radha Nair was perplexed when she realised that she had no inkling of this new game which her entire class was crazy about. Further, on inquiring about this to her amazement, she came to realise that it was actually a game of football that all of us were talking about. With a bemused smile, she explained to us that we had to rewrite the entire thing by primarily specifying football as the main subject and extending its scope to include the so-called ‘Challenge’.

Looking back I feel that instances like these exposed us to the competitive world quite early in our growing up years and instilled in us on how to overcome the fear of failure. My point being even though we knew that we only had a slim chance of a win still 6 A would be the first one to call a ‘challenge’. Reminiscent of this very ‘challenge’ down the years we never let slip an opportunity to play a game of football be it the beaches of Goa or Divekar beach(a drive away from Bombay) or our very own alma mater Loyola school Trivandrum ,the list is endless.

In addition to this it also helped us to gel very much as a group and developed a keen sense of bonhomie which has undoubtedly stood the test of time.A testimony to this is the fact that a bunch of these students from the erstwhile 6 A and 6 B scattered all across the country and the world would meet up today in a video call . The virtual meeting includes an Army Major, a MNC CEO,a hotshot lawyer, a Doctor,a Navy Commander, a MNC Vice President ,a playboy among many others. On a closing note I have got to say that even though I have been part of an Engineering college or a B-School later in life. I have never experienced such warm camaraderie even after so many years of leaving school.

These days it seems ‘challenge’ is the buzzword in facebook where all kinds of challenges are doing the rounds and people are posting their photos left right and center. But for me the word ‘challenge’ invokes a beautiful memory etched in my mind  from my childhood.

P.S : If you liked this post please click on the link below, another blog post of mine dealing with  the topic football in school.

'Mitochondria'