This Article is From Jul 31, 2010

Adivasi boys to train with Bayern Munich

Kamala Tea Estate, Siliguri: The World Cup in South Africa seemed to have taken football popularity to another level back in India. Sanjeev and Nishant are amongst the six adivasi boys from Siliguri district of West Bengal selected to go and spend some time with the football club Bayern Munich in Germany.

Children of labourers at Kamala Estate, a 100-year-old tea garden, who play football have never travelled outside this region, have not played with a club and can't even correctly pronounce the names of top football players but two of them may now play alongside one, the golden booter, the star of the World Cup - Thomas Muller.

"In January 2009 when Bayern Munich came to play an exhibition match they organized a trial for younger boys and they selected these boys who are now supposed to go," said Jayabrata Ghosh, Coach, Siliguri Football Academy.

There is no infrastructure in the garden so the boys travel for an hour to Siliguri every day for practice.

"The basic problem is that these people have been brought up in sheer poverty, the only goal here one finds here is that after school to go back to tea garden," said Chacko Sebastian, social activist and entrepreneur.

But the hard work seems to have paid off.

"We are still backward and are denied most benefits and if we are given some of those, maybe more boys can prepare themselves," said Rosan Rautiya, a local resident.

Libiya, a single mother, earns only seventy rupees a day, sends both her sons to school and runs the house.

"His father passed away when he was still young, I didn't know how to raise them and send them to school but I could send them. It's just dal and rice for dinner tonight," said Libiya Topo, mother.

"I want to grow up as a professional footballer. I don't want to stay in the garden," said Nishant.

While Sanjeev says, "We are a backward community and this opportunity is rare and so everyone is happy."

In 1967, this area of North Bengal, was in every national headline. West Bengal was facing a revolt by the radicals. Opposed to elections and inspired by Mao's total revolution, leaders Kanu Sanyal and Charu Mazumdar led a movement, the first one a peasant uprising in the adivasi village of Naxalbari just a few kilometres from here from where the movement got its name.

Naxalbari is a quiet village today and though nothing has changed for the adivasis here, the two adivasi boys Sanjeev and Nishant's selection to go and play with Bayern Munich in Germany is perhaps the only significant change in their lives and a change that can have far reaching effects.

For the time being Sanjeev and Nishant are back to being students with their board examination just months away. 
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