CHENNAI: The clay turf is the beating heart of Kanyakumari’s coastal town, Neerodi. As the tattered football, filled with air, is flung high, boys named Messi, Ronaldo and Mbappé can be spotted hollering and practising their moves. Soon, 12-year-old Rukku and her sister Sumi breach this male-dominated turf with a ‘vandhu paathukama’ attitude’, yearning to watch matches and conquer the game.
Author and The Hindu journalist Sanjana Ganesh ferries us to Thoothoor on a mustard yellow and red bus and introduces us to the indomitable Rukku. This teenager harbours dreams of becoming a football player like her deceased father, and of mastering the rainbow.
This 94-page chapter book, ‘Kick It, Rukku’ confronts gender roles, grief, coming-of-age and documents the forming of a girls’ football team. It is the 10th in the StORI (Stories of Rural India) series, published in collaboration with Karadi Tales and the People’s Archive of Rural India, which has real stories from rural India, of disenfranchised communities.
“Rukku is a cool young woman, an entirely aspirational character. I want to be Rukku,” says debut author Sanjana on Friday, at the book launch. This teenager — a Vijay fan who dreams of visiting Chennai and Argentina — was a character pieced together during Sanjana’s field visits to Thoothoor in 2022. Between munching away on kadalamittai, the journalist spoke to several ‘giggly’ young women who aspired to become professional football players.
The hamlet dotting the coasts like Neerodi, Sanjana says, harbours histories of women’s football teams. “There were women in the 60s wearing shorts and attending college open tournaments in Kerala. Everyone in Neerodi is a footballer and most women learned from watching. It is revolutionary that an entire village put money where their mouth was.”
As Rukku battles coming-of-age ceremonies, and her uncle’s disapproval, the journalist reminds us that gender has several layers including economy and caste. “It is also important to stop romanticising villages like Ambedkar said.”
During the creative process, Sanjana drew inspiration from the women in her life, including her grandmother Rukmani (where our Rukku finds her name from), the many fights they waged against patriarchy, and the loss of her father. “Nobody had the vocabulary for grief, Rukku eulogises Micheal and continues playing football so they have a lifelong bond. Appa bought me my first books and that’s the reason why I’m writing today,” Sanjana says.
Fostering empathy
From Enid Blyton to Roald Dahl, the books that inhabit libraries, are go-to gifts and part of textbook syllabi are largely Western and far removed from the Indian context. But where are the books containing our diverse cultures, communities and history? It was this thought that motivated Karadi Tales co-founder and publishing director Shobha Vishwanath to begin this series for middle school children.
While volunteering at schools, she noticed that children in urban schools form a homogenous group, from similar economic strata. “Children today do not engage with anybody other than people who are like them. They do not know where the food on the table comes from, who the person washing your clothes is and where does she come from, what she speaks and where she lives. Forget these questions, it does not even occur to them to think about it,” she says, adding this is the reason why people today are not empathetic.
The StORI series is set in rural India and follows children as they navigate various circumstances — from a seething storm that washes away Wayanad’s pepper plantations in ‘Ammini Against the Storm’, stories of migrants as in ‘Lost in Translation’ or narratives of a single mother who toils at a sampangi farm in No Nonsense Nandhini.
“Why can’t you put yourself in somebody else’s shoes and walk a mile in then?... As technology rapidly evolves and reshapes how we tell stories, we never want to forget the power of narratives that keep us rooted to the ground. (The series) tell stories of resilience and indomitable spirit of rural India and showcases young people who put up a strong fight against systematic odds,” explains Shobha.
The price of vendakka is Rs 30-Rs 40 on Big Basket, but what would the price of one kilo be if we cultivated it? asks author and journalist Aparna Karthikeyan. The answer? Rs 300 to Rs 400 but society continues to price labour cheaply. “The word culture is such a fluid thing, it is the food we eat, clothes we wear, and the craft and art. Who are the people who produce this culture — it is mostly people in rural India. If you look at farming, 70% per cent of women are farmers and they own 13% of this land,” she says, adding that the StoRI series is a tribute to people who are invisiblised.
Highlighting the importance of stories, chief guest Padmini Sambasivam, founding principal of Shiv Nadar School, says reading habits dropping and books like these teach children resilience. As for Rukku, there’s no doubt, she, like many other women, outside the pages of fiction is out there competing in matches, having fun and fighting daily battles. As Sanjana writes about the football in the acknowledgements, “This spherical object is not just full of air but with bits of their destiny.”
Priced at Rs 350, ‘Kick It, Rukku’ is available at The Karadi Tales’ website or on their Instagram page @karaditales