They don’t stand out. You’d expect three Americans watching the Kabaddi Nationals at the Samarth Vyayam Mandir, Shivaji Park, to stick out, even in a packed cauldron. But they don’t.
Because for Lee Schlesinger, a social anthropologist from Ann Arbor, Michigan, India is a love affair that began long ago.
Schlesinger has now spent seven years in India researching the ‘‘social structure of Maharashtrian villages’’ and has been living with his wife Lisa Klopfer in Pune for the last year.
‘‘We always come to Shivaji Park when in Mumbai. And this time, it happened to be during the Kabaddi Nationals,’’ explains the duo, who are in the city to drop Schlesinger’s sister off at the airport later on Monday night.
‘‘I’ve seen kabaddi before, in the villages. But I have never seen it so organised,’’ says Schlesinger, who first came to India as a 21-year-old member of the Peace Corps, a US Government initiative towards social development. He was assigned to Kolhapur and worked with farmers and helped with the implementation of mechanised farming.
‘‘I was really fascinated with the culture here. The way the villages here differed from the those in the US, the kind of communities that villages formed. Also the feeling of acceptance here made me want to come back when I returned to the US,’’ he says.
Come back he did. And how! He speaks fluent Marathi and can also read and write in it. He has spent a lot of time in villages in Satara, Kolhapur and Aurangabad. Klopfer is now involved in a research project funded by the University of Eastern Michigan about community libraries in India.
‘‘I’m just amazed by the strength and ability of these girls,’’ says Lisa, pointing to a clash between heavyweights Railways and Punjab.
The organisers even got two teams to line up for introductions with Lisa and her sister-in-law.
On realising that players of a game which is predominantly rural actually manage to get employment in some public sector undertakings, Schlesinger is impressed. ‘‘It clearly indicates that the game is a tool for social mobility.’’