DNA: Hockey stick in hand, underprivileged teens flick woes away

By Fareeha Iftikhar

NGO One Thousand Hockey Legs aims to make the national game of India accessible to everyone; has trained thousands of students till now

For 17-year-old Kishore Arya, son of a driver, life took a dramatic turn in 2010, when he first picked up the hockey stick and then went on to knock down all hurdles in his path to glory. Seven years down the line, Arya will be representing India at the international level.

Arya was one of the thousands of underprivileged children who learned hockey with the help of NGO One Thousand Hockey Legs, an initiative by IIT graduate K Arumugam. The NGO aims to make hockey, the national game of India, accessible to everyone.

Arya was studying in Class VII of a government school in south Delhi’s Malviya Nagar when the NGO members visited to select students for hockey training. “I was in the playground when Arumugam sir came to me and asked hockey khelega (Will you play hockey)? Since that day, I have not looked back,” says the Class XIth student, who is currently being trained at the National Hockey Academy. He was also part of the Indian hockey team that won U-18 Asia Cup in September last year.

“Earlier, when our family used to visit our village, nobody would come to inquire about our well being. Things have changed now. People throng to meet my parents,” says Arya, who hails from the Almora district of Uttrakhand, while talking about the change in people’s perspective towards his family after he became a national-level sportsperson.

Commenting upon Arya’s incredible journey, Arumugam says: “Arya is the first player from Delhi in the last two decades to have made it to the national hockey team in any age group. All the boys training under the NGO are extraordinarily talented. A little support can give wings to their dreams. That’s what happened in Arya’s case.”

The author of several books on hockey further shares that he established the NGO in Puducherry in 2008 with an aim to provide opportunities to the underprivileged children in the age group of 11-15 years. “We specifically focused on the urban poor because we noticed that in metros, such as Delhi, there are a lot of schools but not enough attention on sports in these schools,” he adds.

In a similar turn-of-fate story, Mohammad Zaseem, 17, who had come to Delhi in 2006 to help his elder brother after their father passed away, was supported by the NGO.

“The NGO supported me in every way possible. I could not have even imagined the life I’m living at present,” says the Class XII student, who now attends the Sports Training Centre in Patiala. He has also represented Delhi in several national tournaments.

Currently, the NGO is running training programmes in as many as 80 schools in Delhi, Kanpur (UP), Kolkata, Chennai and Puducherry. “As many as 90 per cent of the children receiving training under the NGO are from economically weaker and marginalised sections of society,” Arumugam says.

“We train children at their schools so as to encourage them to attend their classes regularly and develop interest in both academics and sports,” he says, adding that the NGO also provides free sports kits and shoes to the students.

Last year, on the occasion of the National Sports day, the NGO was presented with the prestigious Rashtriya Khel Protsahan Puruskar by President Pranab Mukherjee.