Bend it like Lydia: B'luru girl kicks her way to US

Five years ago, Bhagyalakshmi suffered a bout of depression. Her newborn infant suddenly went into a coma and finally died three years later.

When the lines of reality started blurring for Bhagyalakshmi, her dear ones decided to send her to work, thinking it would do her some good.

Her search for a job landed her in an NGO called Magic Bus in Bengaluru, which uses an activity- based approach to bring children out of poverty.

It not only revived Bhagyalakshmi's spirits but she became aware of her long lost love for football.
But with a household to run with two children, a girl and a boy, she decided to enrol her daughter in the NGO.

Her efforts paid off as her little girl, Lydia, is all set to go to the United Sates for the second time to attend a football coaching camp for 15 days conducted by July Foudy Leadership Foundation.
She was picked up just because of her sheer talent. Last year, there were three girls from Bengaluru. This time, she is the sole participant.

I arrived at her place at Doddanagar a little late in the evening. Lydia, a tall 15-year-old girl was already waiting for me.

Since her place was a bit congested, she took me to a small hill nearby, on top of which is a Murugan temple.
A few feet underneath, a lot of little boys were playing football. The moment they saw us on the hill, they stopped playing and came running towards us.
There would be 10-12 children. "They are my best friends," says Lydia. Surrounded by a lot of surprised eyes, we started our tete-a-tete.

Lydia says she never thought she could play football.
She credits her love for the game to Kavitha, her Magic bus mentor, who introduced football to girls in their community, which was a privilege only accorded to boys until then.
Soon, she became one among the girls who played football in her community. Within a short span of time, she got opportunities to represent the organisation against many big teams.

"At the outset, our team lost in a match against Mysore team. We were new. But soon we acquired the skills and we started beating many other teams," Lydia says. Narrating her experience in America, she says, "When I went there last time, they talked about leadership qualities. How it changes lives. When I came back, I tried my best to inculcate the leadership qualities which I have learnt from there." Even before her trip to the US that quality might have been inherent in her, otherwise, she would not have gone door to door in her community asking parents to allow their girl children play football as parents did not want them to wear shorts while playing.

 "Some became ready to send their daughters and some remained unconvinced," Lydia says. The girl is hardly lured by the pomp and splendour she experienced in the US. Her focus is clear as a crystal. "It's my dream to be a football coach and I want to go to rural areas and teach children football," Lydia points out. One of the inspirational experiences she had was when she watching a video based on the life of July Foudy, an Olympic gold medalist and retired American football player. "It was touching to see the hardships she had to endure before she made it big.

 It instilled in me a lot of courage to seek what I really want," Lydia says. Though she is in awe of America, she says she prefers India. "There, everything looks the same - people, the places. But here, everything is different and I feel it is special. Most of the time, they eat green vegetables. It's good for health we are not used to it, right," she asks. But she is quick to add that she liked pizza. Lydia has already done her homework.

 One of them being concerns updates of a project which she had taken up during her coaching days. "We are asked to pick a community project. I chose a project of planting 10 trees. I have planted 15 tree saplings in my place and they are certainly going to ask me how my project is progressing," Lydia says. Lydia's best supporter has always been her mother. Though her father initially was wary of her playing football, it changed when she got selected to the Barcelona camp in Bengaluru. Lydia will leave for the US on July 7.

Natasha Ramarathnam, Magic Bus Regional Director, South, says, "Our children and youth complete their education and get sustainable and meaningful livelihoods, while successfully fending off destabilizers like child labour and child marriage. Lydia is perfect example of the impact that Magic Bus has on the children in its programme. A young girl from the community is now going to the US to represent Magic Bus India in a global programme devoted to developing young leaders. Far from being nervous about the responsibility, the only things she is concerned about is how she will make up for the classes that she will miss when she is abroad."

- Shalet Jimmy

Originally published here Bend it like Lydia: B'luru girl kicks her way to US

Murders in Maximum City

It began when a six-year-old girl from Kandewadi, a small slum near Andheri in Mumbai goes missing. Pinky was the first to go, then Jamila followed by Mary, Sindhu and Tara.

Panic grips the slum when these children are returned as mutilated and raped corpses. Lalli takes charge of the investigation with police officers Savio and Shukla and her niece Sita who is also her accomplice. Written from Sita's point of view, Kalpana Swaminathan's latest book slowly opens to an unimaginable cruel world of crime and put forth several questions to ponder upon.

The book has dealt with issues like brutal child abuse, politics that can sell and buy anything, the helplessness of the officials who are not corrupt, pseudo feminism, etc. Though crime fiction written especially by Indian authors highlight several issues and makes the reader ask pertinent questions, there’s often a tendency to dismiss fiction noir as mere 'pulp fiction'. It is unfortunate.

If you put down a list of serious crime novels, Kalpana Swaminathan's ' Greenlight' will be the first in the category. It is her sixth book in the Lalli series.

Let's see who Lalli is? She is a retired police detective who has ace shooting skills. She is in her sixties and is ruling the roost in a world dominated by men. If there is a murder, Lalli is the last resort even for the police.

The book is unputdownable and a great relief that Indian writers can create novels in this genre that can compete with the west.

To speak further on the book, it throws light on the bizarre mindset of the people. On one side, there is the world of the rich, who believe in committing horrendous crimes just for the sake of thrills. They brutalise slum children purely because they do not consider them worthy of living in this world. Then there are the slum dwellers, who refuse to empathise with Tara's mother, a sex worker, even after Tara is abducted and killed. They even pray for Tara's death just because her mother is a sex-worker; they think she deserves it.


What I also like about the book is the innuendoes on pseudo- feminism. In a meeting called by Seema, the journalist who is following the Kandewadi story, women easily forget the atrocities and rape and easily shift their attention to take it as a platform to indulge in their own selfish interests – some writes articles, poem, etc. One has killed her feotus and has written a poem on it justifying her actions that she aborted it to save the fetus from the world. She has taken the decision after reading the Kandewadi incidents.

Sita who could not bear this hypocrisy comes out of the meeting and thinks to herself that “ I had lacked the courage I might have had five years ago to tell those women what a misogynistic bunch of voyeurs, they were, what pathetic human beings they were, if their only response to the pain of others was to trot out sorry tales of their own. I wondered what they would have said, or done if they had seen Tara in her empty hut.”

Calling ' Lalli', a ' Desi Miss Marple' will not do any justification to the round character Kalpana Swaminathan has created. Even the author has clarified once that Lalli is not like Miss Marple. There are no similarities barring the fact that they love sleuthing. Like Miss Marple of Agatha Christie, Lalli has her own identity.

One thing that could have been avoided is the gory description of the brutalities committed to the children. It's horrendous. This reminds me of books written by a renowned Crime writer from the West, Tess Gerritsen. Perhaps it might be their background as medical doctors which enable them to write precise description though a bit gross.

When the story ends Swaminathan also puts across a question to ponder “ The Cry, How can I bear that someone should use my body like this? Is usually read as a woman's outrage. But isn't it equally a man's? It is men who should protest against rape and not women.”

- Shalet Jimmy

published here as Murders in Maximum City