As many you know I love playing games, anything goes fine with me. The one which I already know, I try to master it and the one which I don’t know I try to learn it simple funda!!! But here I would like to mention one unique in which only we Godavites know to play and also it was started with my batch and ended with my batch I guess. Anyways to start with it was our first semester in college and I remember clearly that Chennai was receiving heavy rain. One fine rainy day I was back to hostel from workshop class while It was still raining. I saw few unknown junta playing football in quadrangle but few known fresher faces were going out from the back of our hostel with full enthusiasm along with 4th year seniors. It was the ragging season too for us!! Thing is behind our hostel and facing saraswasthi hostel we have a small lush green field called SANGAM. It is used for hosting inter hostel 9-a side cricket, 6-a hockey and 6-a side football tournaments.
Anyways I rushed back to room to change in to sports gear and went to sangam. All this I did to kill the curiosity. But there I was confronted by one of my seniors and he ask me to follow him. And I saw the whole sangam was submerged with knee deep muddy water and my fellow hostel mates were playing and falling into it while it was still raining heavily. Finally people got serious and we were told that we are going to play RUBGY and we will call it water rugby for the obvious reason. And apparently it was all done ‘coz our 4th year senior were getting bored of staying inside due to rain for so many days. Some of first year student protested that we don’t know to play rugby. So quickly we were told some basic rules and then were given orders that “you need not worry about the rules, jus pray to god and stand in front of the guy from the opponent and then close your eyes at the moment of collision”. Rest you learn while playing. In case of injuries we have one good hospital to take care of it.
So the game started and so started the fun. We kept running with ball and tossing the ball and catching the ball. Some of us who had seen rugby in TV tried to remember all the fundas. Those time rules also were refined. But more of less it was like catch the guy with his t-shirt and tear his t-shirt. So we played water rugby for one hour or so. It was so much fun. I remember one of my senior nicknamed “bull” was running with the ball. And when we collided I almost booked free ticket to hell. But falling on the knee deep water and also get wet by rain water was refreshing and the whole game turned out be a thriller. And we had so much fun that we got addicted to it from the day one. There came a time when it used to rain and we use to keep the track of water level in sangam. And whenever we got chance we used to announce on the PA “junta interested in playing rugby at sangam, land up there in 5 mins” and with every new game we used to have newbies…and so the game become popular and more competitive too.
But every time when sangam used to get dry, our deep yeti like footprint on the soft ground left ground uneven.
I remember this is the ground where so many tournaments were held. So our college gymkhana had to cough 8K for relaying it and second time it happened they issued notice and stamped 4k fine to sarawasthi hostel. So it was even more satisfying that our rival hostel pays for doing nothing. So it also become a tradition that every time sangam used to dry up we used to get notice that severe action will be taken against culprits from next time. And we the fellow participants used to take pride that we took the case of the gymkhana and the "dean students".
Anyways with every year passed we become more and more skilled and as senior we used to drag our juniors and tradition went on and on for four years. And good things was that even though our hostel became infamous for this game no other hostel junta ever dared to play this and this water rugby kind of became our hostel sports at least to me. Now it is raining like anything Bangalore and surely I miss the game which I loved most in my college days. Of course football is still there in my mind.
Ah damn I miss water rugby!!!
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