Ultimate Frisbee Tournament

Well, I really never thought I'd play in an Ultimate Frisbee tournament but that's exactly what i did this weekend. Through some vague connections we came to know that Ahmedabad (a city in Gujarat) had a team started by some Indians from the US who had come to volunteer and that a bunch of indians who had gone to school in the US had started a chennai team. So the idea of a tournament was started and we headed to Ahmedabad for the weekend.

We named our team Stray Dogs in Sweaters in honor of the mysterious hand-knitted sweaters that appear on street dogs in Delhi during the winter (no actual children get sweaters, just the dogs). I got credit for coming up with the name, but I'm not sure I actually did. Anyways, 14 of use from Delhi played. The Ahmedabad team is supported by a local NGO that works with street kids. Most of the players were ex-street kids that now worked/volunteered with the organization. The Chennai team was mostly young executives for BMW and IT firms. The NGO played host, they are based out of the Ghandi ashram (where he lived for 14 years or something) and housed most of the players (several people, including Doug and I stayed at a nearby hotel instead), fed us and organized a tour of the textile museum and arranged for us to coach/play with the young street kids. They were really cute. And way better at frisbee than I am (which is not hard). It was funny to spend time at one of these smaller, grassroots NGOs again, it reminded me a lot of my work in Jamaica or even Oakland. The volunteers from the US were recent college grads that came for a few months and were so hopeful and optimistic. I feel like that was a long time ago for me, the idea that working for 3 months teaching some kid has a long-term impact no longer resonates with me. Anyways, they were all very spiritual (again, like Jamaica) and genuinely nice.

We beat both teams (no thanks to my fairly pathetic outing) and it was really fun. The Ahmedabad team had several players without shoes and most of us were in cleats - I'm just glad we didn't step on their feet. My highlight was the young kid I was guarding (who constantly burned me) telling me how fast I was. The little kids we had played with the previous day also came to watch and took sides in our game against Chennai (chanting for Chennai or Delhi). We also got covered twice in the local edition of the Times of India - The Sunday one had a picture of me and announced the games that day and the other created an entire quote for me (I didn't say a word of it)! It also made up a title for me! Ah, Indian journalism.

Overall - I don't have many comments on Ahmedabad - really similar to other smallish cities; except many more sidecars on the motorcycles (which remind me of a toy I used to have, didn't know they still existed) and a very cool Langur running down the street which are the monkeys used to scare off other monkeys. I can see why - they are much bigger and very fast!

Quick captions: 1) me, 2) doug, 3) blair in a kilt, 4) cleats versus bare feet and 5) ghandi team shirts