When kids had grounds to play

Whether sports minister MS Gill succeeds in his recently-proposed endeavour to set up a National Playing Fields Association of India on the lines of a similar body in England only time will tell, aware as we all are of the ways of government and civic authorities.
Having lived in Delhi, Dr Gill has seen for himself how open spaces have been heartlessly eaten into.Fact is its playing fields started vanishing one by one in the 1960s with its green healthy lungs outside the city wall being the first casualties.
Just outside Delhi Gate there were more than half a dozen hockey or football fields, breeding grounds of players who went on to play for the country, the most famous of them being the hockey full-back Randhir Singh Gentle of Independents Club.
Football clubs, namely the century-old Young Men and Moghals, also operated from this area. For an annual fee of just Rs 50 they would hire grounds from the Delhi Municipal Committee and play unhindered all year round. What is now the Corporation Stadium was once popularly called the Young Men's ground and what is now a park near the Bhagat Singh bus terminal was the Moghals' ground, scene of Delhi's only Santosh Trophy national championship victory in the 1945.
Beyond the wall outside Kashmere Gate and Mori Gate there were even more stretches of grass where they played hockey, football and cricket. The open spaces there have been eaten into, to repeat the sports minister's phrase, by structures like the Inter-State Bus Terminal (ISBT).
Many other open spaces like the Delhi Gate and Mori Gate grounds have met the same fate. As a young reporter in the Delhi of those days this writer did a series lamenting the vanishing grounds of Delhi. It fell on deaf ears. It found an echo even in distant Karachi where it was later learnt the Dawn reproduced them for two reasons. Firstly, because Karachi also faced a similar threat of vanishing open spaces, and, secondly, nostalgia. Dawn was published from Delhi before Partition, and along with it many of its faithful readers had also migrated to Karachi. But there, too, it made no difference.
After the 1982 Asian Games, the Delhi Development Authority did well to set up sports complexes in the city. But these sports complexes, which charge a fee not easily affordable, are not the same as open-to-all playgrounds.
Old Dilliwalas will remember the quarters built during the Raj for its government servants. In the centre of these squares, as they were called, an open space was left for children to play. Within hailing distance of their mothers, the children playing football, badminton or even hop-scotch felt a sense of security. It was from these places that Delhi's famous badminton players like Amrit Lal Dewan, Chiranjit Lal Dewan and their likes came.
The window of my room in Saket, south Delhi, opens on a poorly maintained DDA district park where all year round you can see boys playing 'kirket' except on days when the place is taken up by a wedding function. The sound of leather on willow is any time more preferable than the noise of wedding functions. At least the boys don't leave behind any stench of stale food and other wedding related debris. For all you know, one of them may some day go on to play for the country.
If Delhi's planners can find the space for as many as fourteen thousand parks, they can see their way to find more safe areas for the city's children. The same goes for the country's other cities.