My encounter with the Real Fans

It was an amazing feeling to have with your legs cramped and with no space to move them, but then this is the price I had to pay to get the best seat in the house. The house obviously here is The Cooperage ground,and the event a match between my Mumbai's Mahindra United and Calcutta giants East Bengal Club.

I am sitting at 3 pm at the top most bench on the main stand where the Bengalis like to sit and they are not stopping to come, infact I was quite late compared to them. I walked in wearing my Mahindra United jersey and all of them gave me the looks which at some time I would have not felt good about but something about these looks felt good. It told me people still care about who supports whom, people still look at an Indian football clubs jersey in a non-players hands and wonder how did he get that jersey?, the feeling that says the passion in the Indian football fans still lives. I myself showed that look to around 10 people wearing East Bengal colours, sporting the red-and-gold passionately, with many wearing the T-Shirt " East Bengal - The Real Power". I was surrounded by the away supporters and at a time was actually thinking of switching but now it was too late and decided to bear the grunt if i had to.
The match started and immediately I forgot where I was sitting and let passion take over me and thought well I am a Mahindra supporter so why should i hold back? And when an incident involving a penalty claim came when Izumi Arata was brought down and to me watching closely I knew it was, but the referee just ignored it and i started raging my anger at the referee, and can you imagine the next moment Sandip Nandy comes out of the box and handles the ball, which clearly he should have been sent off for but was only given a yellow card to the disbelief of the East Bengal fans sitting next to me who also decided to follow in my footsteps and give the referee a few of their thoughts when he was close enough to hear them. The match started getting intense, as Sushanth Mathew got into a tussle with Edmilson and immediately what followed was the supporters up on their feet and the tension was there to be felt amongst us the fans as it transfered itself from the players to us as well. When a useless Steven Dias hopeful ball ended up in the net thanks to a Debabrata Roy back header I and a few Mahindra fans in my stand and the others in the other stands went into a frenzy, but it felt like a killer blow to the red-and-gold army that had come to support their club, and the disgust was visible on their face. At half time we all spoke to each other joyfully and in the right spirit of the beautiful game, all accepted that their team East Bengal had not played well, and maybe Mahindra deserved to be in the lead. But to whatever I might feel of the moment when Edmilson's free kick hit the post and went in, I will never be able to forget the moment of craziness and passion around me, the away fans were dancing shouting with their full voices at the top, and some turned to me and actually as a rival fan should taunted me, and to tell it was an amazing feeling to have because at that moment I felt the passion of the football fans in India. I could see it in them that they do love their team and will be with them no matter how much they might curse them. It was jubilation around me and now you could hear the Bengali comments flying around, you could feel the adraneline running through them and now me for I wanted Mahindra to respond back, and me with a couple of kids started chanting for our local team and the atmosphere was building for a grand stand finish. From the corner when Mohammed Rafi ran in delight after he scored the Mumbai teams supporters went into exstacy, and now it was my time to taunt my rival fans and tell them who was the boss, kiss on my teams badge and tell them the scoreline which read 2-1 to the Mahindra's. The faces dropped but there was still time and for these supporters around me enough time to get one back and pull a draw at least. The atmosphere became even more electric when in the dying stages Sandip Nandy was adjudged to have caught a back pass and an indirect free kick followed by Edmilson lying on the floor causing a chaos amongst the players and us, and since we didn't have television replays to see what happened, I personally decided to have a go at Edmilson for falling down to easy, but at the same moment Bello Rasaq was shown the red card and now the East Bengal fans felt a goal, they felt it was their turn to celebrate and enjoy but when defender Bolaji skied his shot over the goal, their voices went into pin drop silence.
The match finished and Mahindra United won but after the match I spoke to all of the East Bengal supporters to whom I could and told them that I felt proud to know that there are people like them to keep this beautiful game going, people like them whose support I feel will bring Indian football the recognition and support that it needs in tough times. And it is us - you, me who now have to take things into our hands and do as much as we can for our passion - i.e. Indian football.