Rugby values help Future Hope boys to blossom
TWENTY years on I set myself the task this week of zapping the phone and tracking down a few of the Future Hope team to see how life has treated them in the interim and catch up with the gossip. As you do.
Future Hope has never claimed a 100 per cent success rate – some of the lads alas return to the Kolkata Streets never to be seen again – but what is noticeable is that the year 2000 rugby team, touch wood, all seem present and correct and many keep in touch via Whatsapp and Zoom. One or two have ducked under the radar a bit and gone quiet but isn’t that always the way with any group?
The majority have done well but like the rest of us they are not immune to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Many were thriving in the hospitality and tourism industry before it took such a massive world-wide hit this year.
A number of the lads – their eyes opened to a better, kinder world – used that trip to England to play at the Rosslyn Park Sevens to better their prospects.
Two – Kabir and Sukra – earned scholarships at Reading Oratory school where they played regular First XV rugby while Dhiraj wowed the assessors at the Chelsea College of Art and was given a foundation scholarship.
Tapas, off his own bat, visited three universities either side of the Rosslyn Park Sevens and eventually landed himself a 50 per cent scholarship at London South Bank to read International Hospitality, Tourism and Management. Such an enterprising and entrepreneurial streak has now seen him open his own funky restaurant on the left bank in Paris – India StreEAT food at 105 Rue Monge.
Not that it’s been easy. Tapas had just opened the restaurant and was turning away customers for the first couple of months so popular did it prove when the gilet jaunes and transport strikes struck. Then Covid changed the world. Lockdown was introduced and a week after he eventually reopened, the sixth floor flat above his restaurant flooded and rendered his wiring unsafe.
Then came a second lockdown during which he got seriously ill with Covid. Now he is rewiring the place intending to relaunch the business when lockdown ends, at the moment projected as January 20.
“I tell you Brendan the last year has been the hardest of my life and that includes the streets of Kolkata but we will get there,” says Tapas. “The restaurant will be a success. It’s a good idea, the customers like it but with no tourism I currently have no business. My health is returning though and that is the main thing.
“You have to keep working away, just like rugby. I was never a ‘star’ player, I was never an automatic choice, I had to work very hard and nothing changes.
“They were great days though. Rugby at Future Hope gave us something to concentrate on and aim for in the future rather than obsess about where we had come from. What I never did properly back then was say thank you. What I didn’t appreciate is the automatic goodwill and support you get from other rugby players and fans. It is very humbling.
“My old teammates are still the most impressive individuals I have ever met. They inspired me with their courage and perseverance. As soon as I have secured my livelihood and make some money it will be time to give back to Future Hope.”
Others have found that being what we blithely call an economic migrant can be challenging with too much time away from family. Yunus for one, having been forced to return to Calcutta after years of working silly hours as a concierge of some of the top hotels in Dubai and Doha, is determined now to ride the storm out in Calcutta and find similar employment there when the world returns to normal.
“In one way Covid has been very hard, we had to return to
“After surviving in the Calcutta streets and then discovering rugby I fear nothing”
Calcutta and the future is uncertain but there have been positives,” says Yunas. “I see my wife and children every day now, we go for walks, I teach them rugby and I’m getting fit again after too many years out of action. I have also been getting back in touch with the team. I am feeling a big reunion coming on very soon.”
Little Jahid had no particular thoughts of becoming an accountant but he so impressed his employers, the Linde Group, with his work ethic and diligence that he was persuaded to study for and sit his exams rather than just be an office boy.
“It’s like rugby again, you have a new skill to learn and it is very difficult at first, but you must stick with it,” says Jahid. “As long as you work and concentrate hard you can do it and be successful. After surviving in the Calcutta streets and then discovering rugby I fear nothing and nobody.”