Higuita in the Boardroom

Father Geevarghese, a parish priest at a South Delhi church, likes to keep to himself. A compassionate man by nature, his overriding passion is football, and his hero is the Colombian goalkeeper Higuita. Uncharacteristically for a Catholic priest, Father Geevarghese has often imagined Higuita as Lord Shiva, stone-faced, strong, with his matted locks flowing in the wind.A significant number of his flock comprises neo-convert tribal girls from Jharkhand, employed as maids in posh South Delhi homes. Like Lucy Marandi. The affable father is also aware of the racket that operates in Delhi; brokers who brings such girls to Delhi from their forest patches, promising them good salaries. He also knows how these brokers often behave like pimps, exploiting the girls themselves or pushing them into prostitution.

One of the regulars at his Church, Lucy, was going through such a torture at the hands of Jabbar, the person who brought her to Delhi. And the father suspected something's wrong from Lucy's sad face and her sobs at Sunday masses. Like his role-model Higuita - a goalkeeper who is not afraid to leave his comfort zone of the penalty area and play forward, even score a goal or two - Father Geevarghese decided to take matters in his hands.

He asked Lucy to take him to Jabbar's house and when Jabbar tried to hit Lucy, Father Geevarghese transformed himself into Forward Geevarghese, that young, athletic footballer who could have made it to the Kerala state team had he not opted to be part of God's Eleven. His kicks, which carried the same weight as 30 years ago, were now aimed at Jabbar's chest and face. Blood oozed down a fainting Jabbar's chest, adding red to the 'Oklahoma' graffiti on his dirty, white T-shirt.

Father Geevarghese returned to his church, calm and quiet, just like Higuita walking to his goalpost from midfield, his job done.

N.S. Madhavan wrote the short-story Higuita in 1990, and 28 years later tribal girls from Chhattisgarh are using football to set themselves free so that they do not have to depend on good samaritans who are hard to come by these days.

Higuita was a pioneer in influencing other goalkeepers to take more responsibility for situations further away from the goal, like the way Father Geevarghese took responsibility to save Lucy.

I thought as the world cup football is just 5 days away, remembering Higuita and Father Geeverghese and, (one a legendary goal keeper and another a fictional character inspired by Higuita), and reflecting on the way we take responsibility for what is happening might be useful.

Do we take responsibility or blame others, the situations and sometimes even destiny and fate? How would our lives change if we take a stand that we are responsible for where we are today, with whom were and what we are doing? There is a loneliness while a goal keeper faces a Penalty Kick. Your colleagues can not help much and the gallery is watching, making the goal keeper feel small, vulnerable and under pressure.

But not Higuita.

Waving his arms like a conductor of an orchestra, Higuita creates a context in which the player who is about to take the kick become merely one of the violist in the entire orchestra just performing his role.

Responsibility, and the belief that, I am the cause not effect, is powerful, as well as empowering. As the language suggests, it is a ‘response ability’: the ability to choose our response in every moment to all that is going on around us. Eric Fromm considers that the comprehension of freedom is impossible when we think of it as a group experience. To speak of freedom of man in general, rather than of the individual, we are lead into abstractions that make the problem insoluble. 

It is easy enough to write off Rene Higuita as one of football's most craziest Goal keeper. But to do so would be a disservice to a man who played a bigger part than most in revolutionising the role of the modern goalkeeper. We must remember that  in the 1990s, Higuita redefined the role, showing that a goalkeeper could be as good with his feet as he was with hands.

We need more Higuita's in the boardroom, who would go the extra mile, take responsibility and ownership and would be as good with their hearts and guts as they are with their heads.