The match is barely a quarter of an hour old when Lallianzuala Chhangte, the speedy Mumbai City winger, gets the ball on the right and bears down on the Hyderabad goal.
It’s a pleasant February evening and the top-of-the-table Indian Super League clash between the two giants, a potential season-decider, is off to a nervy start. A slip here, a trip there, anxious dugouts.
Chhangte scurries forward but a few yards away from the Hyderabad box, tumbles on the ground. The referee has a close look from roughly 10m away and waves play on, concluding that the India international fell because of his own mistake rather than being fouled by a defender.
The players don’t protest. But the decision riles up the fans.
In an instant, a section of the crowd, seated in the stand above the dressing room and behind a local train cutout through which players enter the field, begins to sing what’s become a customary chant at the Mumbai Football Arena.
“Ch***a referee,” the chorus echoes followed by synchronised claps before the cuss word is hurled once again at the match officials.
The man in the middle, Harish Kundu, wonders what he’d done to deserve the abuse, even three months later. “Chhangte hadn’t even asked for a foul,” Kundu, 31, says. “That’s when it hit me, ‘now I am in town.’”
Kundu, one of the youngest referees in the league, tries to not get affected. For him and others who have officiated in a match in Mumbai, where the abuse towards them is common and frequent during a match,...
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