Indian football player Baichung Bhutia : Dribbler to juggler

When a nattily-clad Bhaichung Bhutia — fitted navy blue blazer, white linen shirt, snug jeans, not-too-pointy brown shoes and blue ribbed socks — walks in late for an informal coffee meet in New Delhi’s India Habitat Centre, he apologises to you like he would to an old friend.
A quick side-hug is followed by another apology. He sighs, mumbles something about incessant meetings, and takes out a deck of disparate visiting cards he’s collected in the last hour, as if to  push his alibi that he really was busy.
You cut the just-retired India striker — ‘Sikkimese Sniper’, they call him — some slack. He does seem like he has a lot on his plate. And it’s not just his two phones that give him away. One, incidentally, the new iPhone, has a picture of his infant twins — Ugen (a boy) and Keisha (a girl).
When you ask to see the photo closely, the father is happy to oblige. They’re tiny, not yet two, and strapped tightly to their prams. (Fraternal, not identical, he says, and “very different”). Madhuri, his wife, back home in Gangtok, evidently has her hands full.

When Bhutia entered the Habitat lobby, for a moment it looked as if he had brought along a small entourage or chelas. But once he introduced Anurag Khilnani and Kishore Gam Taid as his partners in BBFS (the Bhaichung Bhutia Football Schools in Delhi), the chela suspicion took a backseat. BBFS — that’s what some of the meetings Baichung spoke of have been for.

They aim to train youngsters with good footwork into major stars in the not-so-distant-future. The former India captain is dribbling through a maze of meetings to get this off the ground. He is also holding “intense” discussions with a major Indian IT firm for funding this initiative.

His partners, Anurag and Kishore, “from IIT”, Bhutia says with unmistaken pride, captained their football teams in their time (they’re 26 and 27). But as they will later joke, “we stopped our soaring football careers” for a few years of 9 am-to-5 pm drudgery.

Post-IIT, Kishore went on to do an MBA from IIM-Ahmedabad, worked at UBS, got fed up, and in a year wanted to do something “sportsy”. Anurag got picked up by Morgan Stanley, slaved for four years and decided enough was enough. Of course, knowing Baichung helped.

The schools apart, it’s the United Sikkim Football Club (USFC), launched in March this year, that’s been taking up much of his time. The team flew to Kolkata earlier this week — not just to witness the Argentineans battling it out with the Venezuelans — but because they’re preparing for the final against Mohun Bagan.
Still in its nascent stage, the club has managed to bring on board two Indian internationals — Renedy Singh and NS Manju — in addition to, of course, Baichung. His partners in the venture are singer Shankar Mahadevan and Dubai-based FidelisWorld, a newbie sports and entertainment company.

We move to a slightly less conspicuous corner, right next to a painting exhibition. So, how’s life been post retirement? Are you spending more time at home? Is Madhuri happy? What do you make of this coach calling you a traitor? Do you think it’s a good thing that sport institutions are going to come under the sports ministry now? Are you fed up of giving interviews?

He answers all stoically. He is happy, yes. Retirement hasn’t helped him stay home, though. But the wife is thrilled he’s hung up his spurs. Madhuri’s been worried about his injury for a while now. Still, he is busy — with the USFC and the football schools and even playing football. Why, just the other day, he went from Delhi to Jharkhand and back to Delhi the same day and played for a full 15 minutes there out of popular demand, Kishore tells me.

Obviously, that calf muscle will throw tantrums, I tell Bhutia, adding mock-threateningly, “Wait till your doctor hears about that!” He shakes his head, “Yeah, man...” There’s that taut, only mildly amused, non-guffaw expression again.
What about the discarded sports bill? It was a good move, Bhutia says. He’s all for transparency in sports federations. What he wants, though, is the government to pump in more money into the ministry so that sports, in turn, can prosper.

Coach controversy? (A former coach called him a traitor). “Who (Syed) Nayeemuddin?” Oh, please, Baichung’s wince seems to say. He hints at it being personal, that they never got along, but that it doesn’t matter and he doesn’t take any of this seriously. Besides, the former coach has said sorry and swallowed his words.
He tells me about the coffee shop and lounge that he’s going to open in Gangtok and asks me to visit it. “It’s like the West.” He’s also going to get started on football merchandise soon. “People back home are keen, and Sikkim has the money.” USFC, he says is going to be big. Early days, yes, but the boys are, he says, “training hard, putting in a lot of time and effort”.
After the friendly with Mohun Bagan on September 5, Bhutia will return to Gangtok and his agenda will remain: to get a team in shape good enough to make it to the I-League.
In doing that, he has a mundane battle to fight, which includes getting gas and cable connections for his players. He may have called it a day on the field, but off it, he is still sprinting through the midfield.
-Agency: DNA