The person you’ve called is out of coverage area

“Internet na sahi, phone he chala do/aashiqon ka haal behaal hai/bina family pressure ke/ juda kar diya hai government ne…”

More laughter. This time, even louder.

Hammad jokes about the slightest of things – a friend making a trip to Delhi just to send an email; teammates forgetting bags at the airport the moment they get access to internet after touching down in another city; and ‘just roaming here and there in Srinagar without any purpose.’ There might be nothing funny about the current situation in Kashmir. In humour, though, the 22-year-old has found an outlet. “We laugh about it but the truth is these are ‘very, very difficult’ times,” Hammad says. He finds it almost impossible to speak candidly about what he has lived through, repeating the words over and over again: “Imagine not being able to communicate with your loved ones.”

For Hammad, a defender who plays for I-League club Real Kashmir, the inability to speak with his mother hurts the most. Before every match, he calls up his mother in Batamaloo, a suburb in Srinagar. It’s a short conversation, with his mother muttering a few prayers to ensure her son doesn’t get hurt during the match.

However, the routine was forcefully discontinued after the central government blocked all communication channels in the Valley following the decision to scrap Article 370 and strip Jammu & Kashmir off statehood. “In the first match I played (after that decision), a tear rolled down…” he says.

The phone line, once again, goes silent.

***

Late on August 4, Hammad and four of his teammates got an SOS from the Real Kashmir management, asking them to report at the team hotel at once. The plan, originally, was to meet at the airport the next morning and fly out together to Kolkata to join the rest of their teammates ahead of the Durand Cup.

But an air of anxiety had gripped the city. Several rumours were circulating, and the locals were certain a curfew would be imposed. “We live here, we know the pulse of the place,” Real Kashmir co-owner Sandeep Chatoo says. Hammad adds: “We quickly said goodbyes to families and left. We were a bit worried. The next morning, on August 5, we heard the news that something happened in our Kashmir.”

By the time the quintet reached the team hotel in Kalyani, roughly 50km from Kolkata, it was well past midnight on August 6. Yet, all the players waited in the lobby to receive their teammates. “The Kashmiris arrived at 2 in the morning and every player was up,” manager David Robertson says. “It was like long lost friends. It’s unique.”

The players, meeting each other for the first time since the conclusion of the last I-League season, embraced each other and joked around a little before hitting the bed. Forty-eight hours later, Real Kashmir defeated I-League champions Chennai City by a solitary goal.

It wasn’t their best performance — the players lacked fitness and didn’t look cohesive. Half of their players weren’t included in the first 11 since they weren’t match-ready. The other half, the Kashmiri boys, was distracted at not being able to get in touch with their families for two days. They just about scraped through. And after returning to the dressing room, the local players broke down. “There were too many emotions that were released after the match,” Hammad says. “We are professionals. But we are also humans.”

Robertson chips in: “Everybody has certain difficulties to overcome. As a team, we’ll get through it.”

***

Robertson’s words couldn’t be truer. For, Real Kashmir has been ‘getting through’ one problem after another from the time it has come into being.

Real Kashmir is a club steeped in symbolism. It is owned by a Muslim newspaper publisher, Shamim Mehraj, and a Kashmiri Pandit businessman, Chatoo. The club was formed following the devastating floods of 2014. Since then, it has broken barriers, brought people together and reignited hope of the locals who have been battered by decades of violence.

Robertson, the team’s Scottish manager, snubbed offers from China and Uganda to catapult this bunch of nobodies from the lower echelons of Indian football to the top division in a span of three years.

In mid-2018, Real Kashmir won the second division league and became the first team from the region to qualify for the I-League. It wasn’t the final frontier for Indian football, but when Real Kashmir kicked off the match against Churchill Brothers at Srinagar’s TRC Ground last November, it felt like that. It was the first time a national league match was being played in the Valley.

And in a breathtaking backdrop of snow-covered mountains and flaming red Chinar, Real Kashmir continued to script their fairytale, overcoming a hurdle or two at every step. Months after the club took formal shape, football activities in Srinagar came to a halt after the death of militant Burhan Wani.

Then, a month before their I-League debut, the final of an invitational tournament between Real Kashmir and Minerva had to be cancelled due to curfew. The league clash between the same teams had to be cancelled as well, after the Chandigarh-based club refused to travel to Srinagar following the Pulwama attacks. “Then, all of a sudden, all this happens,” Chatoo says, referring to the abolition of Article 370. “Srinagar is in turmoil. It has been tough. But you have to overcome every difficulty.”

***

To call the TRC Turf Ground a stadium is being too generous. The ground gets its name from the Tourist Reception Centre (TRC) adjacent to it and is situated on one of the busier streets off the Dalgate Bridge and a few minutes’ walk from Lal Chowk. Every Sunday, a bazaar is set up along the dusty footpaths, where vendors sell woollens at throwaway rates. It only adds to the hustle and amidst all the chaos, it’s easy to miss the tiny gates that lead one to an even tinier ground. There aren’t many facilities the ground offers, apart from the year-old, cottage-like dressing rooms. Back in the day, the maximum crowd at the ground used to be seen on Eid. That changed last year, when 15,000 people routinely crammed the stands named after the state’s football heroes.

However, when Real Kashmir returned to Srinagar after the Durand Cup, the streets were deserted and the city centre looked more like a ghost town. “When we returned to Srinagar, we did not want to train at TRC. That was the time the problem had started and we did not want any exposure or risk. We did not know how the people would react and wanted to maintain a very low profile,” Chatoo says.

So, the I-League club, which finished third last season, got its pre-season officially underway at a school. Chatoo and Mehraj used their connections to get the team to train at the football ground of Delhi Public School, Srinagar. The hard surface and dry, brown grass were hardly ideal circumstances to train, but there was no other choice. And at that point, the training ground seemed like the remotest of concerns.

The club was — in fact, it still is — running short on funds. Last year, the J&K government had assured Real Kashmir a funding of ` 2 crore per year for three years. A similar deal was struck with the J&K Bank. However, because of the administrative crisis in the state and J&K Bank’s internal problems, the amounts are yet to be disbursed. “A lot of corporates, too, could have come forward. Everybody says fairytale, this, that, but no one steps forward to help us. We feel sad about that,” Chatoo says. There have been moments when the businessmen inside Chatoo and Mehraj think of giving up. “But that’s not possible. Knowing what the club means to this place. The hopes of the youth are on us. We can’t let them down.”

***

From his office inside a boutique hotel in central Srinagar, Robertson wonders of a time three decades ago. He was a strapping, young left-back with Scottish giants Glasgow Rangers. “I wonder how my coaches got everybody to show up at the same place without much of internet or mobile phones,” he says. To Robertson, it feels like those old days all over again. He thinks of the pre-mobile phone era… the landline phone hanging on a wall next to the staircase inside his house at Aberdeen. “One phone between the entire family; if you missed a call there was no way of knowing who it was.”

He harks back to the time at Phoenix FC, the American side he coached before agreeing to manage Kashmir. It was luxurious and cozy; family by his side. When he first came to Kashmir three years ago, Robertson left in a couple of weeks and wouldn’t have returned if the co-owners hadn’t convinced him.

By now, Robertson is used to certain things. He has had to cancel training sessions because of an encounter or stay indoors owing to curfews. He’s also gotten accustomed to having no internet and phone connections. But not for such prolonged spells. Robertson has been married for 29 years, and not a day has passed when he hasn’t spoken to his wife. Until now. “The hardest part has been not being able to call home. You adapt to everything else… But that is tough,” Robertson says.

Staying cut off from the outside world has been a challenge for all. Captain Loveday Enyinnaya, from Nigeria, has not been able to see his daughter, who is just three months old. Centre-back Mason Robertson, the manager’s son, hasn’t been able to speak with his fiance who is in New York since he has landed in Kashmir. Safety isn’t an issue. Seclusion is. The lack of communication before postpaid services were restored has resulted in some emotional meltdowns. But then, the players turn to the most potent antidote — humour. Gnohere Krizo, the forward from Ivory Coast, is the joker-in-chief, using his broken English to crack up his teammates. A few others probe their philosophical self, sitting by the Dal Lake and talking endlessly about life in general. Some others fall back on everyone’s favourite pastime — FIFA.

It’s been a long, tough pre-season for the players. But Robertson sees a silver lining. “It’s made them stronger. They’ve spent a lot of time understanding each other. No one is on the phone on the dinner table. People are sitting in their rooms on the phone or laptop the whole time,” he says. “There are times it is hard. But it’s not a prison camp. Everybody is a flight away from going home. They always know that.”

***

But no one will.

The fact that the club managed to retain close to 80 per cent of the players and the whole coaching staff from last season, a rarity in Indian football, is a testimony to how the players feel about the team. Real Kashmir’s debut season is one that few will forget. The TRC ground became one of the most difficult venues for the teams to travel because of the cold weather, high altitude and the passionate crowd that is very close to the playing area. “We hope we can play at TRC because it’s a fantastic atmosphere. I go back in my career and I’ve played at Rangers, Leeds United, the Rangers-Celtic games… but this, the atmosphere at TRC is something special,” Robertson says.

Unless advised by the security agencies against it, the All India Football Federation (AIFF) has said they will conduct Real Kashmir’s home matches in Srinagar. That’ll be a boost for the club because last season, they lost just two out of the eight matches played in Srinagar, a run that kept them in contention for the title till the very end. Chatoo says the Pulwama attacks, which led to the East Bengal match being moved to Delhi and the Minerva game being abandoned, ultimately cost them the title. Poor bench strength and lack of goal-scoring options also contributed — so much so that Mason, the centre-back, was at times played as a centre-forward. Ahead of the new season, which gets underway on November 30, the club has done some good business.

Apart from retaining most of their key players, they’ve added English striker Kallum Higginbotham, former Pune City winger Chesterpaul Lyngdoh and former Shillong goalkeeper Phurba Lachenpa to their roster.

In pre-season friendlies, they beat Kerala Blasters FC 1-0 and drew against all other ISL opponents — Mumbai City FC (0-0), Jamshedpur FC (3-3), FC Goa (1-1) and Hyderabad FC (1-1). The final pre-season engagement for Robertson will be off the field. In fact, it will be on the red carpet. Real Kashmir’s story was documented by BBC Scotland and the short film has been nominated for BAFTA Scotland awards, to be held on November 2. Robertson’s got his best tux prepared.

“It’ll be a big moment,” Robertson says, knowing it’ll put his team under more international spotlight. “The difficulties we’ve had for the last two or three years have made it such a strong unit that it is difficult to break it. We want to keep the story going.”