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.