Pele and the Shoeless Ones

I recently read the autobiography of the great footballer, Pele. His father was also a footballer. But a knee injury ended his football career and the family faced hard times. Pele, the 7-year-old child, was the eldest among the siblings at the time. He felt about helping the family economically even at that young age. He frequented his neighbourhood with a shoe-shining kit for shoeshine work. However, he hardly got any customers as most of the people in the neighbourhood did not wear shoes. Pele asked his mother to let him go to Bauru Athletic club stadium on match days for shoeshine, and there he earned a little money. Around this time, his father got a job and the family got a regular income and Pele was enrolled in school.

Pele had a passion for football since childhood and played it in the courtyard or the street with friends. They used to stuff a sock with paper or rags and shape it into a sphere and play with it. He formed a local football club and looked for a proper kit for the team. One of his teammates suggested collecting old iron, bottles and stuff around the streets and sell them. This did not yield a worthwhile result, as there were already many scrap dealers around. Another mate suggested selling peanuts at the circus and cinema. They stole the peanuts from train wagons, roasted them and made a small sum of money from their first adventure. The earnings were just sufficient to buy shirts and shorts, but not socks and boots. Their second attempt to steal peanuts failed, and the club played their first match without boots and came to be known as shoeless ones.

I also used to dream of being a footballer during my teenage years. We had our village football team consisting of young boys in Dehradun during the 1970s. There used to be many CHAKOTRA (pomelo) trees, the largest citrus fruit, in Dehradun. Mostly, we used to play football using CHAKOTRA as a ball, as we had no resources to purchase a football. Although, it used to hurt our bare feet a lot.

During one summer vacation, we planned to earn money through sericulture to buy a football and kit. We approached the sericulture department. They appreciated our initiative and assured us to provide all the support and guidance.

Thus, we got the small sized caterpillars (silkworms) from the sericulture department in a rectangular bamboo tray and fed them mulberry leaves. Initially, they ate very little and we did not face any problems. However, day by day, the size of caterpillars kept on growing. The number of trays increased accordingly, and the consumption of the leaves also grew in that proportion. We found it difficult to cope with their hunger, but the yearn for football and kit kept us somehow going on. We collected leaves from far-flung areas on bicycles. It was a great relief after about 21 days when the caterpillars stopped eating the leaves and began to spin cocoons.

The sericulture department bought the cocoons and paid us accordingly. We were on the seventh sky and purchased a football and kit for the team and thereafter participated in local tournaments. Till date, we, the football mates, discuss and talk about the day when we got football and kit and that is one of the finest days to cherish in our lives.