1 Regressing

Author's note: I am not the best at writing sports scenes so this is an experiment and practice. Please engage in the comments and review to give me feedback. I will continue the story based on the engagement and the reactions for the next 10-15 chapters or so. I hope we can create something good together. Enjoy fellas!

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People rarely ever think of sports as a viable career option or something to sustain a livelihood with a stable income. Except for the highest-paid players with absurd earning numbers in the tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars that sound too unreal, for ordinary people, sports as a career is highly inaccessible.

Especially a career in football or soccer as the Americans like to call it, was almost impossible for me, living in India where the entire country worships cricket.

Not to mention, I had all the odds stacked against me, having to grow up as an orphan in the streets of Mumbai.

Interesting fact about my heritage, my mother was a Spanish woman who came to India to find spirituality but instead found cheap cocaine and ended up prolonging her vacation. Things happened, and she got knocked up by an Indian guy which resulted in my birth.

Fortunately for me, her motherly instincts held up enough for her to get cleaned up during the pregnancy, but raising a newborn seemed to be too stressful and she ended up relapsing when I was two years old. She overdosed and passed away the day I turned three.

There I was, an orphan kid alone in India who spoke broken Spanish mixed with broken Hindi. The broken Spanish and a love for football were probably the only good things she left me. Oh, right! There was also that small apartment with overdue rent and a small amount of drugs.

Come to think of it, I have never been to therapy but my unusual passion for football might have been influenced by her too. The clearest memory of her I have is the image of her screaming with joy at some football match playing on the TV.

My mother with her sunken eyes, skinny face, and unkempt hair smiling brightly and screaming while raising both her bony hands in the air is the picture that always comes to mind.

Since it was a long time back when I was a child, I don't remember much but somehow those details still managed to remain in my memory. I don't know, maybe it is all just a trick of my brain.

Anyway, after the police took away her body and the drugs they found in the apartment, I became a burden that nobody wanted. The police didn't even bother to register me as her son in the files or take me to an orphanage or something. Too much paperwork I suppose.

Thankfully, some kind neighbors took me in and took care of me for a few years. They weren't too rich either—just a family of six living in a three-room apartment.

There were some reservations about taking me in within that family but the grandmother there had a soft spot for kids and I was a cute child. So I got enough food not to starve, a corner, and a blanket to sleep and in exchange, I helped with simple chores.

But when I was about eight or nine years old and starting to lose the cute baby fat, a kid was born in their family. Once again, I became a burden. Frankly, I don't even resent them for asking me to leave. They had already done more than they were obligated.

Once again, I was left to fend for myself and I ended up on the streets. Begging, pickpocketing, stealing, and doing anything necessary to survive, I slowly grew up.

The good looks that I had inherited from my mother helped a lot. A good-looking child beggar is easier to sympathize with. I had learned the merits of appearances quite early in life. No matter how tattered my clothes were, I made an effort to always keep them clean.

The mixed-European features in my appearance and my relative cleanliness elicited sympathy from shopkeepers, tourists, and random pedestrians alike. It is ironic but I earned more by making an effort to look less like a beggar. I learned early that humans are illogical.

Even more so, in India where there is an obsession with the Western world, a child with fair skin and Western looks was automatically assumed to be someone from a well-to-do family.

"Why do you get more than us every time?" The kids would ask me and I would always reply to them the same way, "Clean up sometime."

Although being a good-looking child had its share of disadvantages on the streets, it taught me how to fight adults larger than myself and be ruthless and resourceful.

When I was just starting to get used to the streets, a couple who happened to spot me offered to adopt me. I was of course ecstatic to get adopted and finally have a roof over my head.

"Don't go kid. You will only come to regret it. They will just sell you or make you a slave." The older kids had warned me. But the young me was still naïve and optimistic about the world. I wanted to live in a house with a family like others. And so I went with the couple.

Thank the heavens for the vulgar mouths of the street children who had taught me everything about sex in the first week I joined them, I quickly caught on to what the purpose of my adoption had been.

It doesn't get any more obvious than a grown man coming into your bed half-naked and touching you while you were asleep. After the struggle of a lifetime and almost biting off a finger, I was punched a few times and thrown out thanks to the neighbors waking up due to the commotion.

After that, I became a 'worldly' street kid who avoided anyone who wanted to 'adopt' me or take me somewhere safe like the orphanages.

Even while on the streets, my love for football never stopped. I made balls out of garbage, old clothes, and anything I could get my hands on until I could save up to buy a real one. I played by myself when there was no one to play with and collected other homeless kids to play with whenever I could.

Funnily enough, for a long time, I barely knew any rules of the game except that you played with your feet and you hit the ball into the goalpost. But that didn't stop me from playing all the same.

I was about fifteen years old when an NGO volunteer found me dribbling the ball by my lonesome next to a landfill and offered some money to play for their NGO team. It was only after the short one-day training with him that I found out that football had so many rules.

The first game I played was in a tournament organized by some local orphanages and NGOs. Some bullshit to show off that the street kids they took care of were playing sports. They probably did it for more donations and whatnot but I didn't care. I was getting paid to play.

And so I played like never before. Having only played in the streets where you had to snatch the ball from even your teammates, my rough play style was out of sync with the somewhat trained teams.

"Pass the ball!" "Here! I'm open." The kids would scream at me but the moment I got the ball on my feet, I dribbled and ran with it straight to the opposite goal. Defenders? Just push them away. Tackles? They can try getting kicked by me. Passing? Why should I?

Of course, if I didn't get the passes from my pissed-off teammates, I would snatch it from them. The coaches and the players all scolded me after every match but that's the only way of playing I knew.

Despite my lack of training, I scored the most goals and got the most cards in the whole tournament which eventually led our team to win the trophy. Needless to say, nobody liked me including my teammates.

But a sports coach from a prominent school in Mumbai saw some talent in me and decided that I should attend his school.

"Kid, what's your name? You play quite interestingly, I like it." An old Indian man who looked to be in his mid-50s, wearing a football jersey approached me after the tournament was over.

"I'm Rohan. What do you want old man?" I was cautious. On the streets, you never knew when some kind-looking man would approach you with sweet words and go on to sell you to some organ harvesting group and then make use of your cripple body to beg for them until you die.

"I am Vekatesh Mathur. I am a football coach and I want you to play for my school."

After a surprising introduction and a lot of persuasion, when I was just turning fifteen, I joined a school for the first time.

The family that took care of me when I was young had taught me enough to read and write but that was the full extent of my education. I had always thought that was enough. It was already more than most of the kids around me learned.

But now, the coach was telling me that if I wanted to continue playing football and living a decent life, I had to study all kinds of books and catch up on a decade of lost education in two to three years.

I was not one to give up easily, so I spent the last of my teenage years studying with kids much younger than me and practicing football. I spent every waking hour with a book in my hands and a ball at my feet. Even sleeping with the books and the ball at night.

After three years of intense concentration, at the age of 18, I somehow managed to pass high school. Meanwhile, I also helped the school win a regional tournament while playing on the right wing and earning myself a man of the tournament and a Golden Boot for scoring 13 goals in 12 matches.

After my mother, Mr. Venky, the coach who got me to school was probably the person who had the most influence on my life. Venky was the nickname that everyone used to call him by.

In a school where I couldn't even understand the insults thrown at me because the other kids spoke mostly in English, old man Venky was the only encouragement that kept me going. While coaching me in football he even found time to teach me other subjects including English.

After high school, I continued to college for a business degree with a sports scholarship arranged by Mr. Venky. It felt like I was finally starting to live up to his investment and care in me.

My college team didn't win any tournaments but the team was visibly improving after I joined and we were winning a lot more matches than before. I was scoring goals like a machine while changing positions between the right and left wings, and attacking midfield.

The training I started from my days in the streets using both my legs, which I kept on refining even through school and college, was very helpful for me to play the different positions.

I was also quite good at ball handling and dribbling but again my habits from the streets made me falter at passing and playmaking. But I continued to practice and learned to read the space on the field and to make better passes.

It was slower than I wanted but I was getting better every day. Mr. Venky was optimistic about me getting into club football and even the national team at that pace.

"You have the talent kid. As long as you use that burning passion to train hard, you will reach greater heights." The old man would repeat the same lines over and over to the point that I started to believe in them too.

But as it happens in most stories, the universe likes to throw in an obstacle right when things are getting better. It might not have been the greatest but I had some talent, and I had a passion with which I trained day and night. Turns out, that became the problem.

My body which had barely seen any nutritional care until I was in my late teens could not handle my passionate training and playing. Starting with a torn ligament, injuries continued to pile up until one day during a match in my third year in college, my knee just gave out.

On the last day I ever saw the man, Mr. Venky told me, "Much like a game of snakes and ladders, sometimes in life, no matter how hard we try, the snake swallows us right at the finish line and shits us back out at the start. All we can do is to keep trying again and again."

I understood his advice but I was too ashamed of myself and too angry at the world and its unfairness so I cut off all contact with Mr. Venky. I couldn't face him when all his expectations of me had been shattered and I could no longer play like he hoped I would.

 I only found out about his death at a much later date through an obituary in the news. It became one of my many regrets.

After the knee operation, I was saddled with a series of debts and I ended up focusing on my business degree to get a job early to make money. I got myself a corporate job right after graduation and got lost in the race to earn even just a bit more.

It's not that I lost my passion for football though. I continued watching the sport and playing leisurely with local futsal clubs and the company team. I even became a sort of a legend in the company for being good at sports.

With athleticism and good looks, I was somewhat of a ladies' man too. I never managed to get married though. The loans kept getting added as I paid back the last one and I kept getting the new ones. Starting from my knee operation and rehab, house loan, car loan, and so on kept me busy.

When I was approaching my forties, I became known around my home and office as a single middle-aged man who was obsessed with football. I was doing fairly well in my job too, sitting comfortably at a mid-level managerial position. The only void in my life was not being able to play football like I wanted.

I started coaching the kids in the local area as a way to fill that void. From diet, training schedule and regimen, tactics, and even sports gear, I researched and helped the kids with everything, sometimes paying out of my pocket too.

Within a year I had gained a reputation for my systematic and scientific training. It especially exploded when a kid I had trained for two years ended up being selected for the under-17 national team.

It felt like a second chapter of my football life was starting when Mumbai City FC, a prominent Indian football club, offered me a job as a coach for a junior team they wanted to nurture.

Elated, I suited up and took my car to their offices for an interview. But the universe was not done throwing obstacles at me. And this time, it wasn't a metaphorical one.

At an intersection on the road, a truck came out of nowhere around the corner at lightning speed. It was already too late when I spotted the truck and before I could hit the brakes, my car hit the truck.

And here I was, my body halfway out of the windshield, my broken head bleeding out on the crushed bonnet of my car, and my life flashing past my eyes while there was a crowd around me taking videos of the whole situation and murmuring about what a tragedy it was.

By the time someone had the smart idea to shout out to call for an ambulance and chase the fleeing truck driver, my eyelids became too heavy to keep open and the light was fading. The universe had finally gotten one over me with this one, my life was coming to an end.

It was a life full of regrets but also a life well-lived. I couldn't do many things that I wanted to do but I also did more than many others had the opportunity for… Huh?

Why are my final thoughts turning into a monologue? Am I in a coma? Did I survive somehow? Huh? What is that light? What is this? Why am I upside down? Why is there a giant nurse here?

"Oh shit!"