കപുചിന്‍സ്കി

റിസാര്‍ട് കപുചിന്‍സ്കി യെ നേരില്‍ കാണണമെന്ന് ഞാന്‍ ആഗ്രഹിച്ചു. വിദേശകാര്യലേഖകനായി ഇന്ത്യയില്‍ തുടക്കം - പിന്നീടുള്ള വര്‍ഷങ്ങളില്‍ 27 അട്ടിമറികള്‍ക്ക് സാക്ഷി, 40 തവണ ജയില്‍ വാസം, നാല് തവണ വധശിക്ഷ.

എന്നാണു ഞാന്‍ ആരാധകന്‍ ആയത്‌? ആറ് വര്‍ഷം മുമ്പാവണം. ബോറടി മാറ്റാന്‍ കൈയില്‍ കിട്ടിയ ഒരു പുസ്തകം വായിക്കാന്‍ എടുത്തു - Soccer War. പിന്നെ അത് താഴെ വയ്ക്കാന്‍ തോന്നിയില്ല. അതിലെ ഒരു ലേഖനം നിങ്ങളും വായിക്കൂ:

This time Luis announced his belief that there would be a war after putting down the newspaper in which he had read a report on the soccer match between the Honduran and Salvadoran national teams. The two countries were playing for the right to take part in the 1970 World Cup in Mexico.

The first match was held on Sunday 8 June 1969, in the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa.

Nobody in the world paid any attention.

The Salvadoran team arrived in Tegucigalpa on Saturday and spent a sleepless night in their hotel. The team could not sleep because it was the target of psychological warfare waged by the Honduran fans. A swarm of people encircled the hotel. The crowd threw stones at the windows and beat sheets of tin and empty barrels with sticks. They set off one string of firecrackers after another. They leaned on the horns of cars parked in front of the hotel. The fans whistled, screamed and sent up hostile chants. This went on all night. The idea was that a sleepy, edgy, exhausted team would be bound to loose. In Latin America these are common practices.

The next day Honduras defeated the sleepless El Salvador squad one-nil.

Eighteen-year-old Amelia Bolanios was sitting in front of the television in El Salvador when the Honduran striker Roberto Cardona scored the winning goal in the final minute. She got up and ran to the desk which contained her father’s pistol in a drawer. She then shot herself in the heart. ‘The young girl could not bear to see her fatherland brought to its knees’, wrote the Salvadorian newspaper El Nacional the next day. The whole capital took part in the televised funeral of Amelia Bolanios. An army honour guard marched with a flag at the head of the procession. The president of the republic and his ministers walked behind the flag-draped coffin. Behind the government came the Salvadorian soccer eleven who, booed, laughed at, and spat on at the Tegucigalpa airport, had returned to El Salvador on a special flight that morning.

But the return match of the series took place in San Salvador, the beautifully named Flor Blanca stadium, a week later. This time it was the Honduran team that spent a sleepless night. The screaming crowd of fans broke all the windows in the hotel and threw rotten eggs, dead rats and stinking rags inside. The players were taken to the match in armoured cars of the First Salvadorian Mechanized Division – which saved them from revenge and bloodshed at the hands of the mob that lined the route, holding up portraits of the national heroine Amelia Bolanios.

The army surrounded the ground. On the pitch stood a cordon of soldiers from a crack regiment of the Guardia National, armed with sub-machine guns. During the playing of the Honduran national anthem the crowd roared and whistled. Next, instead of the Honduran flag – which had been burnt before the eyes of the spectators, driving them mad with joy – the hosts ran a dirty, tattered dishrag up the flag-pole. Under such conditions the players from Tegucigalpa did not, understandably, have their minds on the game. They had their minds on getting out alive. ‘We’re awfully lucky that we lost’, said the visiting coach, Mario Griffin, with relief.

El Salvador prevailed, three-nil.

The same armoured cars carried the Honduran teams straight from the playing field to the airport. A worse fate awaited the visiting fans. Kicked and beaten, they fled towards the border. Two of them died. Scores landed in hospital. One hundred and fifty of the visitors’ cars were burned. The border between the two states was closed a few hours later.

Luis read about all of this in the newspaper and said that there was going to be a war. He had been a reporter for a long time and he knew his beat.

2007 മാര്‍ച്ചില്‍ എന്നോ ഒരു ദിനം. യൂറോപ്പ് തണുപ്പ് കാലത്തില്‍ നിശബ്ദമായി നില്‍ക്കുന്നു. രണ്ടു മാസം പഴകിയ Economist മാസിക ഒന്നോടിച്ചു മറിക്കവേ കപുചിന്‍സ്കിയുടെ മരണ വാര്‍ത്ത കണ്ണില്‍പ്പെട്ടു. ചില ആഗ്രഹങ്ങള്‍ നമുക്ക് നിറവേറ്റാന്‍ ആവതില്ലല്ലോ.

ഇന്ന് വീണ്ടും സോക്കര്‍ വാര്‍ കയ്യില്‍ എടുത്തു. അദ്ദേഹത്തിന്‍റെ Shah of Shahs ലൈബ്രറിയില്‍ ഇരിപ്പുണ്ട്. അതും ഒന്ന് വായിക്കണം. കപുചിന്‍സ്കി റിപ്പോര്‍ട്ട്‌ ചെയ്ത സംഭവങ്ങളെക്കാള്‍ എത്രയോ അതിശയകരമായിരുന്നു അദ്ദേഹത്തിന്‍റെ സ്വജീവിതം. 'മൂകജ്ജിയ കനക സുഗാലു' എന്ന നോവലില്‍ ശിവരാമ കാരന്തിന്‍റെ ഒരു കഥാപാത്രം പറഞ്ഞത് വളരെ ശരി - "കഥകളെക്കാള്‍ നാടകീയമാണ്‌ മനുഷ്യ ജീവിതം".

യു ട്യൂബില്‍ ഒരു ഇന്റര്‍വ്യൂ കണ്ടു, താല്പര്യമുണ്ടെങ്കില്‍ കാണാം: