From a gambler to a preacher

On most days, he would just spend his pocket money on gambling in the nooks of Bokhara, a hamlet near Nagpur, and sneak some more money out from his father’s wallet to continue the same drill every day. Until one day, the cops caught hold of him. This was one of the detrimental routines that Shubham Patil followed in his teenage days.

“Football takes you from being something to someone in life,” he asserts. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that the sport completely changed the 21-year old, who represented India in the Homeless World Cup in 2016.

By the age of 15, he had already developed an addiction to nicotine, with a handful of his teeth already turning black or falling off. He did not see his father chew tobacco, but it was the people of his own age group who did. “I was only eight years old when my friend made me try kharra (chewing tobacco) and I started liking it and soon I was addicted,” he recalls.

For half his life, he lived in poverty. His father, who is a painter, and mother, who works for the village’s gram panchayat were aware of their son’s addiction, but the thought of getting him to stop never occured to them. A vivid change had to come to pass for the teenager to find a better life and it did in the outward appearance of a sport.

He happened to join his friends who replaced the gambling time with football. Left with no other choice, he tried his hand and the sport in the muddy fields, with goalposts made out of slippers. He did not enjoy it to a great extent but had no other option as his friends fancied playing football. “They would keep talking about it all the time and I was a stranger to the sport. I was left with no other option than to learn how to play it,” he grins.

Patil credits his coach Umesh Deshmukh, who has a small community in the village, for his overall transformation from an addict to a footballer, and now a coach. “He picked me out from the rest and gave me special training. He was the one who motivated me to prepare for the World Cup camp,” he says.

The summer break was similar to any other day for him, just a little warmer, as he never left his village. The only time Shubham ever went out of the city was when he was selected for the national team camp for selection of the team for HWC. Luckily for the lad, it was followed by the trip to Glasgow, Scotland.

“I had never left my village. Nagpur was the farthest that I had ever travelled. Leaving for Kolkata was a memorable experience for me and then Glasgow… it was just wonderful,” he reminisces, with the excitement still alive in his voice. The HWC has a format of four players on each side with a smaller arena with two seven-minute halves. “Unki language toh mere sar ke uppar se jaa rahi thi,” he says. You can compete only once in the Homeless World Cup only once  in your life, according to the rules.

He describes how one’s enthusiasm peaks when your country’s National Anthem is played in the stadium. “There is a different kind of zeal and passion to play when you represent your nation at an international platform,” beams Shubham.

Now, he has taken up the role of a coach in the same academy, as he tries to keep slum kids away from the same addictions and unhealthy practices that he had. He is also a part of a programme called Slum Soccer that is spreading all over the country, to help kids like him.