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Now on the cusp of gaining Indian citizenship and settling down in Chennai—with no last-minute heart-breaking travel-cancellations to shrug off, Vartazarian believes the first lessons in restraint were learnt on the Armenian grounds. Rugby was central to anger management.

Like many of his ilk, he arrived in Kolkata from Iran when he was 10. “The first six months were impossible. Then I got used to it. Going home just once a year then became less painful,” he recalls of his 11-year-old stay at the college, starting 1987.

Riding roughshod like most tackling newbies would, Vartazarian was a school-star alright, but the passing years and exposure to older opponents and closer defeats chiseled his game. “Rugby was a good outlet to frustration for children who come from where I came. I was immature and used power to get through when I first played for my club in 1993. But now I read the game better,” he explains of the metamorphosis which has seen him add speed and stealth to his game—and unwittingly led to Chennai Cheetahs, the team he helped build down south—also the reigning All India champions, acquiring their own character. Seen practising kicking for hours on end much after his teams have done the group drills, sipped beer and left for home, Vartazarian owes his collected approach amidst chaos to the game’s two inspirational figures of the last decade: England fly-half Jonny Wilkinson and Scottish full-back Gavin Hastings. “I always picture them and feel very calm when kicking. I’m in a 100 per cent comfort zone. I’m never nervous. Pressure works for me,” says the 31-year-old.

It is the unflappability which extends to his off-field conduct. If getting a permanent, levelled, grass ground for the Chennai teams wasn’t daunting enough, Vartazarian has been tested severely as he plunged himself into the bureaucratic bedlam of acquiring Indian citizenship so he could be eligible to represent India at all IOA-events—specially the 2010 Commonwealth Games—which he aims to make his swansong.

“The last three years have felt like 20, after I started the paperwork. It’s been slow,” he says. “Now I get to start my life fresh. No awkward questions, no running around,” he says, of what will be achieved if his renunciation of the Iranian passport and citizenship applications go through. “But till it’s complete, I have my fingers crossed,” he says, a tad wary.

While Vartazarian, as technical director of Tamil Nadu RFU, can be credited with pushing rugby into Chennai’s corporation schools and taking a rag-tag bunch of athletes to national-level success, arduous has been the journey involving convincing school principals, begging for grounds, setting up cones, explaining the complex rules to adults and refereeing three successive league matches, besides taking care of his own game.

But easier to observe are the results of the effort—when the current crop of Armenians rush out to cling onto his magnetic persona, at Bombay Gymkhana as he walks in for practice. Backslapping and vivacious, the bunch can at once turn into eager listeners once he drops the smile for some hard rugby talk.

“He’s told us to play hard, stay focussed, never get provoked and never blame others,” says captain Armen Markarian.
A role model for aggression, a role model in restraint. “I really hope they consider me that, and learn things the right way,” he says without conceit, accepting the role as adulation, rather than reeling under the responsibility as deadweight. But then, very few things weigh him down anyway.