Early Morning Fun

If I had to list the things I least expected to be doing in India, near the top would be: appearing as a backup dancer in Shahrukh Khan's next film, learning to drive on the streets of Ahmedabad, and playing a game of ultimate frisbee. Well, I couldn't even handle the beginner moves at Basement Bhangra, so SRK will have to go it without me. And if I'm alive and writing, I certainly haven't gotten behind the wheel in India yet.

As it turns out, every Sunday morning (at 7:30am) some of the kids from the underprivileged areas of Ahmedabad come to a field next to Ghandiji's Sabarmati Ashram to play a bit of ultimate frisbee. The idea was the brainchild of some of the folks from Indicorps, who figured they could give kids from the poorer areas of Ahmedabad something to look forward to each week by getting them interested in a supposedly-non-contact team sport. So after one failed attempt the week before to wake myself early enough to get there, I—along with Dixie—grabbed a rickshaw and headed across the city.

I was assuming we'd find a pretty informal game with maybe enough kids and volunteers to field the two teams. I definitely wasn't planning on running drills or seeing 8-yr olds throw forehands and backhands. About twenty-five to thirty boys and girls showed up, some as young as six years old, some in their teens. We had enough in each age group to break them into groups depending on their size and skill, which was a good thing since the little ones would probably have been lifted off the ground if they had tried to catch the heat being thrown by the older kids.

It was quickly obvious that these kids had been practicing their throws and drills for a while. As I understand it, the goal is to eventually organize a friendly tournament in Ahmedabad to give them a competitive outlet. The older kids in particular seemed to really enjoy the competition.

While I migrated from running drills with the older kids to throwing to the youngest group, Dixie sat out most of the morning with a sore ankle, but snapped a ton of pictures for us. Our favorites are posted on our Picasa page: http://picasaweb.google.com/kaizad.cama/RunningSlideshow20082009. Predictably, the kids flocked to Dixie, especially the girls. The kids were excited to be in front of the camera, some of them striking their best Indian actress look or picking up nearby clay pots with which to pose. In fact, it wasn't just the kids who were excited to have their pictures taken; their chaperone, and even an old gentleman named Rajbhai, who stopped Dixie later that morning at a snack stand, asked for their pictures to be taken. We have no way of tracking down Rajbhai, but happily for the children, Dixie has developed the pictures for them (she'll do anything to get kids' love…it's like an addiction!).

I'm not a morning person, but this made for a really memorable (if slightly exhausting day) even before starting our planned afternoon trip to see the ancient stepwell of Adalaj. I'm hoping we'll be able to go a few more times, but we're doing a lot of traveling on the weekends for the remainder of our trip. For anyone spending a weekend in Ahmedabad, it's definitely worth checking out.