Pride & penalty corners
28 May 2009: Siddharth Saxena,TNN
Hockey is dying in most of India. But in hilly Coorg, it’s flourishing not just as a sport but a social and cultural bond that explodes annually i
nto a unique festival.
This is just no time to come to Coorg, dude,” chuckles M D Somaiah, pointing to the sky. The silver arrow-shaped pierce above his left eyebrow glistens in the summer sun. “Of course, our friends in Bangalore are always ready to come down here,” he whispers. “The booze just flows. This is why we are here too.”
The 21-year-old RJ suddenly straightens up, “But if the hockey festival calls, you drop everything and come. A Kodava (as a Coorgi is called here) never says no to the festival.” The National game may have taken a hit elsewhere in the country but in this hilly, coffee, spice and alcohol-laden region of Karnataka, the sport has flourished in a novel avatar, finding a warm embrace at the annual Kodava Hockey Festival.
Here hockey is not just the national sport. Here it outgrows the idea into a symbol of regional and fierce tribal identity for the local Kodava community. You could say Coorg exists happily in its own time-warp. You could also call it a curious case of sub-nationalism.
Everyone here talks of their family’s historical connection with hockey with almost mobster-like pride. In most cases, ‘The Team’ refers to a gaggle of cousins, uncles and aunts.
Previous defeats still rankle and famous victories become part of dining-table folklore. Youngsters who do as they please all year round, turn into obedient sons and dutifully show up for the festival.
This year the Teams have gathered for the Mandepanda Cup in Ammathi village, a blink-and-miss-it outpost in the district where the silence is broken by the occasional thump of the now-forgotten Yezdi motorcycle. And yes, as the Kodava would remind you, by the gun shot.
“You could say we are the Sardars of the South,” says former India goalkeeper A B Subbiah. “Hockey is just one of the similarities. We, too, are a martial race like the Sikhs. Like them we have at least one member in the army from each family. And yes, we too like to enjoy life.” Subbiah’s penalty-shootout heroics brought India the gold in the 1998 Bangkok Asian Games.
In its 13th year now, the Kodava Cup is named each year after the family that organises the festival that year. This year it’s the Mandepandas family. Prasanna Kechanda, the shy physical education teacher from neighbouring Virajpet, has made the draw after three days of hard work with 250-odd long-winding family names.
Kechanda’s error-free draw – he’s been doing it for 12 years now with friend Harish Puchimada – has caught the attention of Indian women’s hockey chief Amrit Bose, who with the help of Subbiah, wants to bring it to the notice of the world hockey body as the perfect tournament draw model.
Still, there are a few hiccups this time. Of the 856 Kodava clans (from a tiny 3-lakh-strong community worldwide) only 231 teams have made it to Ammathi. The global slowdown and falling coffee prices have not helped but in true Kodava fashion, the Mandepandas will tide over the little reversal and make the show one to remember.
The idea of the family is so great that the likes of Subbiah, M M Somaya, M P Ganesh become anonymous on arriving here. The names with which they have become famous the world over are discarded once the hockey festival kicks off. Now they are just Anjaparavanda Boppiah Subbiah, Manyepanda Muthana Somaya and Mollera P Ganesh. Family names first, international recognition comes later.
“Play the game around the name,” says Sachin Bopanna, 30, who along with goalkeeper brother Lavin helped Nellamakkada to the title this year. The brothers, who had just begun their own event management company in Bangalore, wouldn’t let the fresh venture come in the way of the tournament.
“We were in South Africa for the opening ceremony of the IPL, which my previous company managed. Just reached here, kicked off the new company and went on French leave,” laughs Lavin.
“It is said a Coorgi is born with a gun in one hand and a hockey stick in another,” says Pandanda Kuttani Kuttappa, the brain behind this unique meet that has found its way into record books. Back in 1997, Kuttappa, then a banker, feared for the dwindling impact and identity of his fellow Kodavas. Looking around he found that the army and hockey were the only link that could keep them together.
Helped, no doubt, by the legacy of 60 internationals who have represented India from the region, Kuttappa hit upon the idea organising a hockey meet where only Kodava families could participate. So, in 1997, armed with a budget of Rs 7 lakh, Kuttappa’s Pandanda family hosted 60 teams for the inaugural meet, which 13 years later has become a much-awaited fixture on the Kodavas’ social calendar.
“You can’t call it a tournament. It is a festival — for the Kodavas, by the Kodavas and of the Kodavas,” he says. Kuttappa is insistent that an outsider playing the tournament will sully the purity of the festival. “For us this goes beyond just a hockey match. No outsider can understand this,” he says.
Sixty-two-year old CA Mutthana, the doyen of the Cheppudira family team, has a more balanced perspective. “The Kodavas are in a minority in the district – both socially and politically. Hence a sense of anxiety shows up which is met with such exhibitions of unity and identity as this festival. In today’s world, you could say it is stupidity, but that’s how it is here. We like to live well, spend better. Sell my coffee today, don’t think about tomorrow,” he says.
Mutthana also demolishes the Kodava love for the gun. “It is so important in our culture that we even fasten the gun to the dead body in the procession, but of late, all the shots we fire at festivals, weddings and funerals are blanks. At Rs 40 a cartridge, how many can we shoot and what will we eat?” He laughs and adds, “Thank god for hockey.”
This must rank amongst one of the few sporting meets in the world where women can line up alongside the men. What’s more, they are given the choice to either play for their maternal team or the family into which they are married into. In fact, most of the disputes that the tournament committee is called to arbitrate over are ones involving women wanting to turn up for both their father’s and husband’s teams.
Krithika Kaverappa, a 21-year-old accountant from the Kokkanda family who slammed a hat-trick against Palecanda, was shown a green card in one of the matches. “It wasn’t an opponent,” she says, “but an uncle from my own team that I swore at. I couldn’t help it, he missed an open goal!”
This social juggernaut now moves to the care of the Manyepanda family. “Next year it will be Sommaya’s family,” says an old-timer. The stop will be Ponnampet, a slightly more populated township than Ammathi. There will be more people than the 25,000 who turned up this year. “Come and see for yourself. Like the coffee, hockey grows in Coorg.”