Rising Indian Footballing Hero....

Eight years ago, when he first arrived at the orphanage in the southern Indian state of Kerala, Raja Chinnaswamy had never seen a football. Today he is a rising star of Indian football, a 14-year-old already being talked about by his excited coaches as a future fixture in the national team.
The story of Raja is so extraordinary.Born in Tamil Nadu in 1994, he was four when his mother died. A couple of years later his father fell ill and lost his job at a sugar cane factory.

Hoping their luck would change, the boy and his father headed for the town of Thrissur in Kerala, but quickly found themselves penniless and on the streets. With his father too ill to work, Raja turned to begging.

If anyone needed a break, it was Raja. Finally he got one. A friendly bookseller found him sobbing in the street and took pity on him. He knew of an orphanage where the boy would be safe. It was Raja's good fortune that the Janaseva Boys' Home in Madhurappuram was run by a former international athlete, Jose Maveli, whose has a passion for sport.

Maveli offered the 100 or so boys who lived there a chance of an education, but, more importantly for Raja, sports training. It was not long before his natural footballing talents were spotted by a couple of former Indian footballing internationals roped in by Maveli to lend a hand with the coaching.

"He is a very speedy player with the ball and a very good goal-getter," said Soly Xavier, who played right back for the national side from 1986 to 1989. "He thinks about positioning and is always watching the other players. Whenever he gets an opportunity, he scores a goal. Within a year and a half he will be in the national side."

Last September, Raja was selected for the state football team: "I was happy and crying. Many of the players were crying because they had not been selected, but I was crying because I had."

Now trials for the Indian national side are beckoning. Neither Raja nor his coaches doubt that he will make it. "I will definitely play for India. I can do it," he says.

And he trots off towards the centre circle of the red dirt pitch carved out of a scrap of land surrounded by palm trees in one of the most beautiful parts of a country that does not yet care about football - but may soon have something to cheer about.

"A life without challenge would be likegoing to school without lessons to learn.
Challenges come not to depress or get you down,but to master and to grow and to unfold your abilities."