 new episode of 420 grams work from home specials like everyone else these days we are also working from home there is no football and in fact Spain was one of the first football leagues to call off all their games in light of the COVID-19 pandemic Spain is currently Europe as we all know is the epicenter of this pandemic right now where unfortunately the most number of cases are being seen as well and Spain has been hard hit by this we are joined today from Spain by Gurumar Chadda who is the manager of the Sudeva FC residency in the town and the Spanish town of Zativa. He's also a board member of the Spanish Tesserra club CD olympic de Zativa. Gurumar thanks for joining us man in a second once we finish the introductions we also joined from Noida by Anuj Gupta who is a multi talented young man lawyer by training but also co-owner of Sudeva FC in Delhi which runs a quite successful residential football program in north deli as well as fields clubs in the i-league at the age group levels as well as hopefully in the future in the i-league second division and going on to the i-league itself and Arjun Pandit of course co-host of 420 grams Arjun take it away man. Hi thanks guys firstly thanks so much for taking our time at Gupta for making it happen and the reason we've you know got this episode put together is because everyone is in lockdown and currently a lot of football clubs that were in training have also been put into lockdown and one of them is of course Anuj's club CD olympic Zativa which also has kids from India currently in Spain so Gurumar first tell me how long have you been in lockdown there and what is the atmosphere in Spain especially of the kids who are from India so on a day-to-day basis how are you motivating them how are you keeping them united because it's an indefinite period we don't know how long we'll be in lockdown so yeah first of all hi to all of you so we've been we've been under lockdown since the 15th of March and it's been now 11 days I mean things are fine even though it's a lockdown if you you can move out to shop and stuff like that it's not that bad but yes I mean you can't go out for non-essential things so so right now I have 10 boys nine of them are Indians and one boy from Japan all the boys all of them stay at home most of the time we do indoor activities a little bit now we have fortunately we bought some stuff just before one day before the lockdown like a small table in a stable and darts and stuff like that and a playstation as well so so yeah that's how they basically keep busy these days and obviously they also try to work out uh once every day inside say apparently when this you know pandemic was taking shape and at that time what was the kind of atmosphere with the kids in the beginning yes uh with the smaller boys because the most the 10 boys that I have here are 18 and above most of them so but there's one boy who's who's younger who's 15 uh so yeah he was supposed to fly back to India but his flight got cancelled and India had put 13th as the last day to come in to come back and he missed and he had to stay over here so he's here now um it was really difficult with him with his parents and all that uh it got a bit complicated because his parents were obviously really worried uh since he's so young but now uh I mean there wasn't and with the older boys uh there wasn't I mean we didn't feel a panic like situation with them uh they were more or less okay I think they were also expecting something like that to happen so yeah so yeah because because we've been close to it we had already seen that it had already happened in Italy so it was more or less in our mind that it could happen here as well before the lockdown was announced uh because obviously Italy and China of course reports started so before that lockdown was announced was it affecting training was it impacting uh boys in the terms that they were saying that we don't want to go out because this is happening so let's just be safe rather than sorry no before the lockdown happened it wasn't I mean there was no there was no such effect training and training and everything was happening normally life was working functioning normally yeah I mean people started taking precautions like washing their hands more frequently but otherwise life was normal everything was normal and suddenly the next day the government is set to lockdown pretty similar in a sense to what what happened in India just very quickly to start with what as the owner of this club your and especially when since it's a sort of youth set up all the players are quite young the first thought must have been that you are kind of responsible for these boys and and their well-being and of course Guru Ramar is there and he's the man on the ground but what what were you thinking what do you what are the first thoughts as club owner that came to your mind uh well first of all hi guys uh and I and it's great to have such a conversation right now because I think uh at this moment it's very important to have a lot of positivity in all the videos which you're trying to make so uh well as a club owner I was more uh concerned about uh the parents who were you know calling me on a daily basis and asking me that you know the numbers are going uh high and high so what are you thinking should we should we get the children back but I was very clear that you know the numbers might be going high in Spain at that moment but eventually the numbers would start picking up in India so India would also not be safe and considering Sativa which is a very small town having a population of 28,000 people so it's easier for us to uh quarantine them in a house or in a town and protect them rather than you know making them take the flight and putting them a lot more uh averse to having such a disease on the journey uh plus in India is also not as safe as you know I feel Sativa could be so uh I was very clear that I wanted all the boys to stay there and I'm very I'm very confident that Guru would have taken care of all the boys uh but I'm nevertheless I'm happy that the boys have come back home safely and all of them are quarantined uh for at least 14 days now so everyone is quarantined but yeah whoever went back to India I had instructed the parents that these have children have to be self-quarantine for at least 14 days because they were coming from Spain but uh and it also showed a lot of character of the children who are staying back you know barring one child who is fine because he's 15 year old he's never been outside India he's from Sikkim uh mother is a principal father is a senior ice officer so they were very concerned but remaining most of the boys they showed strong character not even once the parent called me they said that sir they're not coming back you know uh for us this is our house so I think yeah I was very clear that you know and as as as an owner as an owner when you hear your boy saying that there must give you a lot of uh must give a sense of calm at the time when the entire world is going all over the place man so that's why you know and even I give uh heads off to Guru uh once or twice he got slightly uh you know pissed off or uh which is which is normal right when parents are putting that much of pressure but in totality he has taken it fantastically I mean forget about his health you know he is made sure that the children are very very uh uh positive and they're not thinking what is happening outside the world outside the house so I am I am I'm speaking to all of them and good thing is that all of them are working out at least one and a half to two hours very diligently which is which is which is great so you know whenever it opens up you know my boys would be ready to get back to the ground and showcase that you know they're even fitter than before Guru before we move on to of course the competition time and I'll just tell us some of the precautions you've taken man and you've done a tremendous job I'm guessing 18 boys how many how many boys in total with you now 10 boys 10 boys 10 boys what are some of the precautions you've taken at that time because at the end of the day you're all foreign boys in a foreign country and you need that one saying ahead to bring everyone together yeah precautions were basically whatever uh was being suggested by the local government and the and the authorities I mean it was pretty easy to know worldwide everywhere on the internet you get you know what basic steps that you have to follow so for example washing your hands um I bought masks although I didn't give them the mask because masks are people who are infected but just in case now in the time of lockdown if we are moving out then for example if I go out to shop then I wear a mask so so so and god forbid if masks are needed to be worn even inside the house in the future then I have it in stock so hand sanitizers were also bought I mean it was difficult getting all these things because they even here the availability was wasn't there but somehow we managed and and otherwise then I sometimes also keep checking with them if someone has fever or a dry cough you know just trying to see some kind of symptom but I mean luckily everyone is perfectly fine very healthy so yeah inside the house they're pretty safe I wanted to get a bit of a picture of your facility there Guru so what is it a big house where you're all staying and sort of do you have a how do you deal with meals and stuff like that who are you cooking yourselves uh also if you can tell us now 11 days of lockdown but you've been like you mentioned in the beginning when lockdown announced what I was trying to do panic buying and a lot of people are stocking up on all kinds of things so availability of goods was low but now just say agar agar shopping khanavana li nahi jaate hai kuch dhaway li nahi jaate hai to what is the situation like on the ground in terms of availability of essential goods in the market also yes about the availability the first few days yes there was panic there was panic buying happening toilet papers being bought in huge quantities by everyone but I mean for us since we had 27 or almost 30 boys in the beginning so we already had stock in a way because we've already stocked most of the times so if 15 boys go then we still have a buffer so for us I mean for me there was no need to start stocking items and all that but then yes when initially when I went to the supermarket and all that you could see empty shelves and all that but now it's relaxed it's much better now there's availability of everything anytime that you go people have come back to their senses but it's normal this happens everywhere around the world so yeah and that way is material wise there's no problem and talking about the facility I mean the boys are we have divided into two groups there are seven boys living in this house from where we are I am calling right now it's a big house that has five rooms a huge lawn outside and then they have an area where they play table tennis and all that as well so there's enough space for them to do indoor exercises as well yoga so I mean there's so much space that the two or three boys can put mats and have a session together so and and then there's another place in the same city also in Sativa where three boys are living which is also a pretty big house so yeah I mean about the cook yeah so there is we have a cook since the beginning who comes every day he cooks Monday to Saturdays he's coming comes in the morning makes the breakfast then he comes in the evening breakfast and lunch and then he comes in the evening and he does the dinner so so he himself also takes all the precautions he is wearing when he's cooking because he's the one who's moving out coming from outside every day keeping himself clean his hands clean all the time so in that sense um it's okay they are pretty calm they are pretty calm so even as they are also locked in now just like me so so yeah I mean I am in touch with them there's obviously a group chat happening with my my so things are pretty calm they're not so worried about parents understand the situation that you can't come back home and you have to stay there yes yes yes so I mean like my mom was actually supposed to travel she was planning to come to Spain now but unfortunately this happened so so yeah but yeah they're pretty in that sense they're fine everything is good I know from an owner's perspective so we went on a lockdown from the 14th of March and we have 50 kids inside and around 10 support staff inside so since 14th we had already bought all the ration and basic groceries for a for at least till April end so nobody's allowed to go out nobody's allowed to come in and inside they're doing their routine on a very light basis and since the section 144 has come in so now the kids are not doing the training together but they're doing training on their own individually and our head coach ento he's making sure that every kid is involved individually and also inside we're doing a lot of video analysis we're doing a lot of team-based sessions more you know mental sessions more discussions about football and tactical and all that so in a way in a way and we're doing a lot of so the senior boys are doing their fitness in the gym all the all these things are happening so but yes we're not providing non-vegetarian food at the moment because obviously I didn't want to get fresh deliveries in because of the because I don't want any new person coming even though they would clean and come back but I didn't want to take that risk so literally they're right now on a vegan diet so it's everything vegetarian and but but it's fine I think so you might also find like some some performance changes based on the diet change because it's a long duration also I think if you're saying March 14th till April end you're going to keep these kids inside and they'll continue on this vegan diet you might start seeing some changes well I don't know I mean I don't know how you're monitoring that I wish the you know the change brings better out of the players but time will tell but I think for children the most important thing is that they need to be involved otherwise they start getting cranky for that definitely a couple of hours of either in the gym or normal individual football drills you know it's like what we used to do when we're you know growing up in colony right just 50 years back so yeah so you know the back old football has started you know hitting the wall and you know passing on the wall and all that so I think I think I think what would improve which we don't which we're not able to do in a training is individual skills so I think now they would really improve on the individual skills and tactically we are working in the in the rooms so I think as a team they would learn a lot because a lot of video conferencing is happening so you're taking this work from home very seriously yeah like a lot of corporates are yeah I think you know we're back to work because it took me a week time at least for me and I'm back on so now I'm working on a uh scouting manual so what Vijay and I we travel so I'm preparing a manual of how and what uh one scout needs to do when he travels in India because I think uh and it will be a state-based manual so I think that's very important for all the scouts in the country what's the response of the local people over there yeah uh with regards to you guys and just the entire thing that's going on people are calm people are calm um if you go out um social distancing as this year has been maintained I mean if you see outside of pharmacy you will see that people are maintaining there's a queue with the queue goes right till outside till the streets so because that's because of the distance being maintained between the people even when we go to shopping I mean two people can't be seen together outside uh it has only you alone can be there outside even if you're going to do some stuff so in that sense people are calm and luckily where we live in the Valencia region in Shatiba especially there haven't been so many cases so so yeah so what I mean it's just wait and watch kind of a situation for us so guru you have mehul and koki with you yeah yeah so why don't you call them in and we can get sort of their take also on it plus koki is from japan so we can ask him since the olympics have been postponed ask him a little bit about the reaction from back home and also how he personally feels about that so bring them in okay so guru as you can see has been replaced by these two handsome young men uh mehul verma from young lads trapping young lads mehul verma from daddy who plays for the jatiba b side the senior side and koki or gawa who's from japan koki where in japan are you from exactly uh i was actually born in korea so because my my mother's korean and my father's japanese all right so so how did you sort of hook up with these guys and make your way into the olympic setup uh so i i first lived in japan for five years and after that came i lived in hong kong for six years that's where i first started playing football so last year uh my agent i joined the levante international academy last year and i i had a really great opportunity i trained uh the 19s but the thing about levante's international academy was that it was hard uh licensed so by the end of september last year i contacted my agent and apparently he knew i think he knew and from what i've heard it was a really great project because like his his plan for the future was to establish a team full of young members which can compete at a really really high level and i think that's what motivated me to join sudia for inshaktiva and what so so you're essentially a spanish transfer from from levante to olympic it's it's in that sense yeah and where where on the pitch do you play what's your position before sorry can you repeat that question i mean where on the pitch do you play what's your preferred position that's the position you should have played and you should have listened to me and you would have played for india let me tell you mayhole mayhole mad let's not make this about us bro this this entire conversation about kids like you kids like you who are in spain right now mayhole tell us a bit about yourself and how did you land up in spain with anuj's team um i used to play for before coming to sudiva i used to play for bbfs which were a rival team of sudiva then i had a plan then my plan after 12 was to go outside india to pursue football i was planning to go to us or my college but then i finished sir told me that you can you can see this option as well and then i explored into this this option and it was good it was exactly what i wanted so i came here when did you when did you come uh come say in that short time i guess it can't have been too long uh in that short time you're playing for the b side now which is quite a must be quite a level up from uh bbfs and playing domestically in india so last year i played in covenil b in which koki's playing right now then this year yes last year i came in december november end december so it was not exactly what a season should feel like it was a short time but this year i it's very different in india we don't get to see all these seasons there's only two or three months league and that's it but here you have to play for 10 months every weekend one match continuous practice everything so that's that's something you have you learn by being here and that's difficult i mean that has been difficult to maintain for me to um keep that temperament keep that mentality but i'm learning new things firstly i have to tell you man that you know when we guys were your age we could barely put two sentences together yeah let's say uh i uh that's it we couldn't talk so you guys have of course taken it up a level koki what's the conversation like back home man i'm sure they're worried but uh what's the kind of conversations you're having with family uh first i'm just really concerned about their safety because as you can see i'm japanese but i lived in shanghai and my parents still live in shanghai so i try to call them every day and see how they're doing right now they're really good they're really good and are they are they what are the kind of conversations and how are they keeping themselves busy and uh what are some of the things you guys are chatting about like how much time do you talk for in a day one day i think at least 20 or 30 minutes what is it what is this since you guys are you're from a mixed heritage sort of situation what what language do you speak speak korean you speak chinese you speak japanese english or hindi um i i learned i learned a few hindi from from my friends here i'm sure i'm sure they've taught you the bad words the best parts i don't say it on the show but uh mostly i speak japanese with my dad korean with my mother and english with my little brother multi-lingual what's the conversation like which are they are they concerned are they concerned asking you to come back or something no safe i have to ask you this question sorry i'm hogging all the limelight here but you know so we asked guru what you guys were up to so he was telling us the normal stuff they're taking our time but now we have the two boys here with us so tell us some of the games that you guys are playing to keep yourself busy and don't worry about this being a family show just tell us as bad as the game can be as dirty as the game can be just tell us what you guys are doing to a while away time in spain uh as you can as as you heard from guru uh we do have a playstation but i think the last time i touched it was five or six days ago i've mostly been playing pp and since this week uh we have online we have online courses and school starts like we can have access to like studying revision materials so that's what i'm trying to focus right now and eating eating chocolates on the side because it's off season kind of you kiss me what about these none of these apps are of any use now not tinder window and all that so there's a there's a crazy app that's killing at house party man house party everyone is getting on that app and playing games are you guys on any of these apps they're good boys clearly there comes the there comes the owner no no but but let me tell you let me tell you about both of them and especially mehul uh you know uh he is uh someone who does uh two to two and a half hours of uh fitness along with meditation yoga diligently you know and and koki also you know he's i've told him that he's working with mehul in terms of uh you know the elements of meditation yoga also so i'm really really proud of mehul that you know he's kept his uh you know fitness and he's added yoga and meditation as part of his regime and uh and it's good that all the boys were staying in the residential they are also slowly slowly learning from him uh that's what i tell them that you know it's important that yoga and meditation make them as part of your daily routine it would really help uh when you'll have the time to score the goal or save the goal that's the time the mental toughness would would be tested mehul do you see anuj's face when you're meditating please tell us honestly tell us he's right here uh i totally agree with anuj's opinion like every life he's like an inspiration for everyone he's like he's like a model like everyone tries to follow for example i he showed me this plan where he tried to like set up his own plan for how to get into Barcelona it was like oh nice dream big man get into like a small club and then start playing matches perform well go to like bigger clubs and you repeat the process over and over again it might seem it might seem like funny at first but you can see the motivation and the ambition is there it's it's just amazing okay thanks man it's really right i just felt that i was in sativa hey but koki koki to be to be to be honest both me and sadan we had dreams of playing for us but instead we're left with a big ass belly and which is drinking alcohol and doing nothing with our lives sometimes these plans don't work out i'll just add i'll just add in there that uh you know and that's uh it's not important that whether we are able to achieve our dreams it's very important that we carry on living our dream that point good point i also feel okay um i am i am in a last year me see kai me both result oriented right i thought he was a match is deep in a high mood a yeah you can achieve for me yeah and i'm a pressure but i don't know i'm a cla result is a lot of controlled actions with a lot of focus So now I don't think that I have to play here or not. Yes, I want to play, but let's see. That will happen in the future. But now I have to focus. Let's see what happens. They are fantastic. Brilliant boys. There is one more thing. Both have the dream to play for Barcelona. Yeah, Boki also. You never told me, man. You can really see on Meru. The simple things he does, for example, even off-season, you can just see the diet he has, the little things, the little behaviours and the little act. I think it shows on the field. Thank you. Actually, just before we wind up, just one more thing. We were talking the other day, you know, a lot of how things work in India now because we're in an Olympic year, or we were in an Olympic year at least, that the national teams are all in camps at various training centres across the country and some abroad. So when news of this virus spreading widely went out, a lot of these camps were told irrespective of whether anyone infected or not. You are going into lockdown and the teams will remain at that facility until whatever happens. So some of the players and stuff, home sickness, all of that. But what we are saying is that the positive side of it is that you are, at least as a group, you are together. You are able to engage with each other. You are able to carry out your activities, to learn new stuff from each other. And also to sort of work on aspects of the game that perhaps if this last six months can lead you to end up coming out much, much stronger, much fitter, much healthier than you were before. What's your take on it since you are actually in that situation? We are just speculating. It's good that we get support from each other. But I think in this season, my health meditation has done more than that. I can be happy all by myself. And if I have any problems with myself, then I am fine with myself. I don't have any problems with myself. That's why I am here. Basically, how it is to be in a team environment during this lockdown, versus let's say what you might have been doing if you were at home with yourself and your family? As you can see, I am alone in Spain, far away from my family. If these guys weren't here, I think I would have been dying from boredom. I would have always been doing the same thing every day, like study a bit. It feels, I think for the whole day, I don't know. But if these guys are here, you know, you expect something you won't expect to happen. That's brilliant, guys. All the way best as long as this lockdown is there. And we hope this lockdown ends quickly, man. And you guys can get back on the football field and keep going abs. I mean, it's something God has told us to do, but we've always ignored. So, all the way best, guys. It was really lovely talking to you. Yeah, thanks so much for taking the time, guys. All the best. Take care.