Depicting the 'tragedy' of Indian football

There is evidence of a rudimentary ball being kicked around in China more than 2,000 years ago. Other countries like ancient Greece and Rome also lay their claim to the legacy of football.
In his show, entitled ‘MARK HIM (2008)’, Riyas Komu referred to the sorry state of Indian football. He spoke of footballer Sailendra Nath (Sailen), who led India to the first Asian Games gold.

The artist in his new art show is referring the chasm of several seas (or Cs) that lies between Subrato and Cesar. Alphabet C precedes S even as the S in Subrato and the C in Cesar curiously make similar sounds. The difference, unfortunately, is that the latter sounds a bit more familiar than Subrato until he is your classmate, colleague or cousin.

This report well could have sounded like a legal paper sans emotion or any decorative effect. However, it took its own curve like a free kick to get airborne; this even as the local lad strives to set himself free from his isolation and open the defining penultimate phase of his outer and inner 'homecoming' with a curiously characteristic interplay of reality and dream. If the football World Cup is an ambitious dream, the banal bylanes back home represent the bitter reality. Right down the vortex of cultural amnesia, the human tragedy here is taking a spiral… And if only he was part of that the World Cup team!

The grass perhaps had turned into thorns beneath those bare feet. Nearly half a century later he can only expect thorns as a member of the suffering population facing a stifling denial and a sense of amnesia that pervade his home country's cultural landscape. Those thousand odd balls that rush towards him, might take him with them past the goal line. Subrato has a lonely and enduring walk back to fetch them back. As he returns, we can recount Julius Ceasar’s words: "How many ages hence Shall this our lofty scene be acted o'er In states unborn, and accents yet unknown!”