The Coorg XI Hockey Team, Mumbai

This article appeared in Times Of India on April 6th, 2008

The Coorg XI team comprises of players whose ages range from 10 to 55. 

Last Sunday, at the final of a hockey tournament in the Mahindra Stadium, nearly fifty Kodavas descended to support their boys.  The match was between Coorg XI, a Mumbai-based team comprising of Kodavas, and Blazian Boys from Thane. Under a sulphurous sun, small knots of Kodavas circumscribed their territory on the stadium stands with sundry picnic items. And the air was filled with, "Come on Appachu, come on Subramani, come on Rohan...Gogogo." 

Hollers flew in English and Kodava takk, the local dialect of Coorg. The Blazian Boys must have felt rather unloved their supporters were not half as loud nor half in number.  "Say your prayers everybody, we need a goal," said Lekha Nanjapa, team managerJagdeep's wife, and on cue, 7-year-old Nitya put down Blyton's Enchanted Tree, and said her prayers. They worked, Ajit Iychettira netted a goal. And the benches trembled in the ensuing roar as Chak De India expectedly erupted from the speakers. 'What's Ajit's last name?' was the circulating question. For the Coorgies, genes more than individual aptitude explain everything. Sample here an outing of the Coorg Association-Mumbai, a congress of nearly 100 families in the city who assemble several times a year to fraternise, away from home in Karnataka's highlands. Such is the tenacity of their ties that some travel to Mumbai from their outposts in Pune and Bangalore to attend a game or a gathering.

 The association was installed in 1921 in Mumbai, with corresponding outfits in other major cities. The association convenes at its own building in Airoli, which is fitted with an auditorium and six rooms that are let out to passing Coorgies.  "Outside hockey tournaments, we come together to celebrate three festivals," says veteran Iychettira M Belliappa, one of the founders of the association's Chennai extension. "Kailpod, when we venerate our weapons (Coorgies are a warrior people, and the only community in India to be allowed possession of a gun without a licence); Cauvery Shankramana (to honour the annual resurgence of the river's waters at its birthplace in Coorg); and Puthari, the time of harvest."  There is a natural need within the community to stay close, to come together, to stand by each other whenever possible. It is this spirit that was evident at the hockey match. Once that game was clinched, two bottles of champagne were uncorked, sending one lightweight stopper straight onto the Astroturf. And what if they hadn't won? "We'd still celebrate for coming this far. We're a people who love a celebration," said Lekha. 

Coorg 11 has qualified to play next season's games a notch higher, in the third division of the Bombay Hockey Association league. This hockey team is a band of disparate size and stature from 10-year-old Appanna to 39-year-old Poonacha and 45-year-old Subramani, former Indian internationals. Three players are 'Coorgi' by consent, having played with the rest in the past matches. The team is lucky to find a place to practise at IIT Powai, where the institute's hockey team is instructed by a Coorgi. "But then we rarely have time to practice. Most of us have consuming work schedules that impinge on our weekends too. We try to make time on a Sunday, before an important game, but we sometimes simply land up for the game," says Nitin Chengappa, Senior Vice President, HSBC Bank. Nitin once came straight to the game from the airport, having only just returned from Bangkok. "The agenda here is to have fun and bond with the 'family'. We're a small, close community with strong traditions," he says. Many of these traditions are articulations of their ancestor worship. Even as Iychettira M Belliappa, oldest member in the stadium that Sunday, awarded token gifts to the players and those affiliated with the game, every Coorgi bent low for a ritual blessing. At home, it is the assembly of ancestors' portraits that preside in place of an altar. 

And home is where all Coorgies will be heading end-April for a jamboree of hockey with family.  "We call it the Coorg Hockey Festival month-long marathon, with every family represented by a home-bred team from within its own compound," said Belliappa. "We've even gone down in the Limca Book of Records for the largest number of participating teams averaging 250. The mammoth festival itself is sponsored every year by a family that vies for the privilege through a common draw." As pandi curry (Coorg's delicious pork staple) spread thin among the congregation at Mahindra Stadium, talk followed the festival, with questions flying about who's going, and who isn't. And it looked like everyone was going.