My tryst with hockey

My tryst with hockey …………………….. I belong to that age when India was top in hockey and a gold medal in Olympic was sure. During my school days, I played football, cricket and badminton but not hockey. Among my childhood friends none played hockey excepting Teja ( Tejbahadur Singh Ahluwalia ). It was a treat to watch Tej’s stick play. He would scoop the ball from the ground and then bounce it on hockey stick for minutes together without letting it fall. While returning from school he would be walking with a hockey stick in hand and ball sometimes rolling on the ground and then again scooping it up. Our school on Reading Road ,New Delhi was next to a municipality school known as MB school for boys. There was no hockey game in our school, our school was mostly in football, in the recess all would be playing football. The boys of the neighboring MB school would play hockey. We used to hear about one particular player Gindi a lot. Whenever Gindi would play, we would watch him play from the rampart, he was a magician with hockey stick, and the ball would stick to the toe as though a magnetic force is holding it there. Whenever we would return from Connaught Place, we would walk down from Madras Hotel towards Gole Market when on the way we would come across National Hockey stadium, where sometimes we would drop in if any match were in progress. In IIT also I played mostly football and badminton. Our hostel Patel Hall had a very good hockey player, senior to us known as P J Singh and he representing IIT,Kharagpur . Dheer was in my hostel who had studied in MB School next to our school so we were pretty pally. In 1964 sometimes-in winter, he brought one Olympic hockey player to our hostel. That year India had won Gold medal in hockey. That player was Joginder Singh, Dheer introduced me to him. Joginder was carrying the Olympic gold medal. As usual, most of the boys were not interested in a hockey player as they were all cricket fan. Soon common room was bereft of students excepting me, Dheer and Joginder. I started having intimate talk with Joginder and to my surprise I discovered him to be Gindi of MB school, Delhi. He was also happy to know that I had watched him playing during school days. He allowed me to hold his gold medal. Those days there was no stmart phone to take selfie with that Olympic Gold medal in 1964. Today when I heard the news of India, winning Bronze in hockey then my hockey moments were passing through my mental screen in sepia colour and taking me back to that Golden moment in my life.