Teen footballer lifts family from poverty
ABOUT four years ago, 15-year-old Anyabai won 54 000 rupees (R10 100) when she led her school team to victory in a state-level football match. The prize money was more than what her mother earned in an entire year.
Hailing from Alakhpura, a village about 30km from the district headquarters of Bhiwani in Haryana, Anyabai is a Dalit by caste and desperately poor.
Her father died of a heart attack when she was 2 and the burden of providing for the family passed on to her mother, Maya Devi, whose life story provides a window into the struggles of people at the lowest rungs of society.
Scheduled caste communities like hers, comprising about 16.6% of India’s population, are generally oppressed, particularly in impoverished rural areas where they are discriminated against by higher castes and condemned to menial cleaning jobs no one else will do.
There are also those who have defied the system and become achievers in their own right. One of them is Anyabai, whose skills as a footballer helped her challenge the oppressive systems of caste and patriarchy.
Just a few years after she started playing, she has already represented India twice at international level.
“She gets about 50 000 rupees (R9 340) to 60 000 rupees for playing every national match. Last year, she won about 2.5 lakh rupees by playing a few matches,” Sonika Bijarnia, her school coach, said.
“She manages to play two to three matches every year.”
So football is not only helping her find a purpose in life and represent her country at the highest levels, it is also helping her to bring her family out of the vicious cycle of poverty.
Anyabai played in the U-15 South Asian Football Federation last year, in which India lost to Bangladesh in the finals. She recollects the final with a bit of disappointment, saying: “We lost 1-0.”
Anyabai, who has a sister and a brother, is her mother’s pride. “Nobody in the entire family has achieved so much,” Maya Devi said. “I didn’t have any hopes (while) Anyabai kept playing,” she said.
In 2016, she played in the Indian U-14 women’s football team at the AFC Regional (South and Central) Girls’ Championship in Tajikistan.
“When I go out of my village, my country, there is fear about going to an unknown land. It is a very different feeling. It’s also nice that I get to make friends from other parts of the country and the world,” Anyabai said.
“I used to struggle with English earlier. I try speaking the language now. There is less hesitation.”
More than a decade back, when Anyabai was small and hadn’t started playing, it was really tough for Maya Devi to manage the family with just the 150 rupees a day she got as a dailywage worker.
“This income depended on the farming season and yes, I struggled… I used to borrow money and somehow managed,” she said.
“I made many efforts to bring my kids up all by myself. If Anyabai achieves something in life, I will consider my life to be successful. I have worked very hard,” she said.
Two years back, she was given the job of a safai karamchari (sanitation worker). Among the five cleaners in the village, she is the only woman.
Despite some improvements, the life of struggle continues for Maya Devi and her family. She has modest dreams for her daughter.
“Aap logon jaise ban jaaye kisi din, yahi chahti hun (all I want is she becomes like one of you some day).”
But Anyabai’s dreams are bigger. “I wish to grow up and play like (Argentinian footballer Lionel) Messi,” she said passionately.
The girl has plans of taking up social sciences at school along with language and vocational subjects. “I will study further, but then I wish to just play and study football after that.”
The young player cheerfully talked about the two big village grounds where she and about 200 other girls go for a three-hour practice twice every day.
“Girls from other parts of India talk about the grounds in their villages and cities. I also boast of the two big grounds we have here in the village.”Anyabai recounts the village’s journey which goes back nearly a decade.
The then school coach, Gordhan Dass, was training boys for kabaddi, a traditional rural sport, when girls began pestering him, and he was forced to indulge them by giving them a football to play with.
Anyabai developed a fascination for the game. After that, there was no looking back.
Today, it is the boys who are taking inspiration from the girls, who have put Alakhpura on the world map with their remarkable success story.
According to her mother, Anyabai is cheerful. “She doesn’t talk any nonsense.”
Maya Devi puts on a ghoonghat (veil), covering her head and face, when she moves out of the house. Anyabai finds the veil too heavy for comfort. “The ghoonghat is very heavy… I will never put it on,” she laughs. – IANS