Now 77 and president of the Armenian Club, he turns misty-eyed returning to the venue. “I didn’t know it would be so bad. I thought first-aid would do. But then the doctor examined it and packed me off to Breach Candy,” he says.
Brother Malcolm Sookias captained the first Armenian team that won the Calcutta Cup in India’s independence year, while Ashram, a wing-forward in his heydays, was also mentor to younger sibling Haik, who became a legend in his own right.
There is no dearth of fables at the Armenian campus—though little has wafted out of the four walls, owing to the community’s low-profile. Vahik even cracked a few walls to reach school-superstardom. “When playing a pass-and-touch game inside the hall, he would run straight into walls. The mortar would chip off, but he never hurt himself,” recalls Sen.
It wasn’t all about muscle though. Another contemporary, Peter—a considerably smaller boy who played hooker, had in defiance of his size attained great skills with which he brought down Vahik and was made captain.
Another legend was Fred Babakhanaian, who besides looking like Rambo, had also gained immense respect after fighting a war and coming back as coach. “He would make us train for four hours then jump into the pool, do swim laps and come out and train all over again. But we loved the rigours,” says Sen.
Till date, the Armenian ruggers sniff at suggestions of working out in the gym, but can boast of supreme fitness. “We got into the game because we liked the toughness,” says current captain Armen Markarian. A flyhalf who aspires to become a pilot, Markarian (19) admits his friends waste little time in classes as chits are routinely passed around, enlisting for teams. Scrum leader Ejuien Ebubijuen (17) plays cricket so that running around wearing pads helps him build endurance. The preference for wild sport is hard to miss when he insists that with the ball in hand, only hitting a batsman or watching the stumps fly wouldn’t hold his interest.
In fact, the Armenians had in their ranks a fast bowler who would bounce out batsmen at Kolkata’s cricket Mecca CC&FC and derive great pleasure from that. Henrik Terchoonian—Vartazarian’s teammate and the man who coached the cubs in their first year of revival, had done his bit to wipe out the fancy for cricket. And while there were no pretensions to line and length when he bowled, “everyone knew him to be a wild bugger,” Sen laughs.
It’s not all smiles, though, for youngsters separated from families when very young. “They all have histories—cannon-fire, brothers with broken arms. They forget nothing, but don’t let it show. Rugby’s a huge outlet,” says Sen.
Bitter rivalries have also been known to melt on the rugby field. As captain Markarian recalls, “We had 7 players from Iraq. The first few days, we used to fight a lot with them and those from Armenia. But then during a rugby game, we saw them being tackled by the opposite team. We couldn’t stand that our team-mates were being beaten up—so we went and defended them. Now we are brothers.”
As a minority in almost all countries in the world, the Armenians know the feeling of being ‘ruled.’ They are ready for the sacrifice of forgoing a threatened upbringing with parents for the Kolkatan shelter. “They should be naturalised. They spend half their lives here, and one day they’re just asked to leave like foreigners. There’s so much they contribute to rugby that it doesn’t seem fair at all,” rues Sen.
As a teenager, he would hang out with the Armenian bunch on Park Street at eateries and discos; the dapper colts never being charged a paisa. As someone privy to their aspirations now, Sen knows they’d love to stay back.
On the field, the scrum leader Ebubijuen basks in the team’s first glory, post-revival. “This is the first title, so it’s special,” he wraps up, hinting at the grand return of the Armenians when the All-India championship travels to Kolkata in 2008.
Till then, LMOB need to watch out.