TWO YEARS ago, national hockey goalkeeper Suraj Karkera, an avid reader, chanced upon the memoir of India’s 1971 war hero, (Retd) Major General Ian Cardozo. Even before Karkera had turned the final page of the book, he had tracked down the war veteran.
The series of conversations since then between the 29-year-old and the 87-year-old kept Karkera, who was then going through one of the most challenging phases of his career, motivated to fight for a permanent spot in India’s hockey team, which he finally earned last year after spending almost eight years on the fringes.
For Cardozo, whose leg had to be amputated on the battlefield during the 1971 India-Pakistan war, meeting Karkera was a chance to reconnect with a sport he had grown up playing.
“Until two years ago, we didn’t know each other at all,” Cardozo tells The Indian Express. “Now, we have adopted him as our protege.”
Says Karkera, “When I reached out to him, my mental space was like, ‘I would like to have that spark again’. Of course, I was training and this and that but you tend to be a bit distracted… what will happen in the future and such.”
Karkera’s concerns about his future were not unfounded. Despite being a constant in the core group of the national hockey team for a better part of the last decade, the goalkeeper was third in the pecking order behind the modern-day great P R Sreejesh and Krishan Pathak.
With only two spots reserved for goalkeepers in a squad of 18 for international competitions — and just one in the 16-member Olympics team — Karkera was invariably left out for big assignments. The only time he got uninterrupted chances to play for the national team was in 2017-18, when Sreejesh, the first-choice keeper, was out with an injury.
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Karkera — spotted by Merzban Patel, the legendary coach from Mumbai, and later mentored by former India custodian Dipika Murthy — patiently waited for his turn, aware that it was routine for goalkeepers to go through this grind. His chance finally came after Sreejesh retired at the end of the Paris Olympics.
In the last five months, he has played 17 matches, nearly as many as he did in the five years before that (19), and has featured in every game of the recently concluded India leg of the FIH Pro League. “It shows your character…what you are going to do when things are not going your way.” Karkera says of the long waiting period. “These are testing times. You need patience and resilience.”
During this phase, as he discovered the world of books, Karkera immersed himself in the extraordinary tales of South Africa’s 1995 rugby World Cup triumph. But it was in Cardozo’s life story, Cartoos Saab: A Soldier’s Story of Resilience in Adversity, that he found the inspiration he needed.
Maj Gen Cardozo fought three wars: 1962, 1965 and, most notably, the India-Pakistan war of 1971 that led to the creation of Bangladesh. In the final days of the war, during the Battle of Sylhet, Cardozo is known to have stepped on a landmine, following which his leg had to be amputated. He went on to become the first war-disabled officer to be approved for command of an Infantry Battalion.
Despite the years that separated them, Karkera realised he had much in common with Cardozo — like him, the retired Maj General was a “Bombay boy” and played hockey in his younger days. Besides, they were both Armymen — Karkera is a naik subedar.
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He then got in touch with Cardozo through Meghna Girish — mother of Major Akshay Girish, who died in the 2016 terror attack on the Army’s Nagrota base — who put him in touch with Cardozo’s wife, Priscilla. “He came to us as an absolute stranger,” Priscilla says. “There are many such requests so I don’t say yes to everyone. But Suraj was down-to-earth, friendly and genuine, so both of us took to him.”
Karkera flew down to New Delhi, where Cardozo now lives, to meet him. Karkera calls him a man “100 years ahead of his time” and spent hours listening to Cardozo’s stories from the battlefield — “it’s goosebumps” — as he tried to understand how he coped with pressure situations, which he thought he could put to practice on the hockey field.
“He has a certain perspective about things — black or white and no grey. So it helped me to refocus on reality rather than being distracted,” Karkera says.
Cardozo liked it that Karkera “wasn’t arrogant” and was prepared to learn. “I told him that sport is like war and you can’t go into a war unless you are prepared. So you have got to train, train very hard, so you are the best. But training by itself is not good enough. You need to understand what makes you win — winning is important. It’s all very well to say, ‘play the game, play for the country’. No, no. It’s stupid if you play to lose. You have to play to win.”
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Cardozo adds: “I told him you need to be the best. If you are doing something in life, there’s no point being the second-best because, in war, there is no such thing — you are either a victor or you are defeated. But this doesn’t mean you cheat. You have to follow certain ethics.”
Since their first meeting two years ago, they have remained in constant touch, talking about hockey and life. “Whenever I have a problem, I tell him,” Karkera says. The Cardozos, too, have grown fond of him, rooting for him every time he steps on the field.
“We didn’t know him two years ago. Now, we have a soft corner for Suraj,” says Priscilla.