Mid-Day Opinion: Means more than a show, or soccer!

A still from the Sony LIV series ‘Real Kashmir Football Club’

Happy," isn't usually the instant answer, when you generically ask, "How are you?" - as I do to ad-filmmaker Mahesh Mathai, whose Sony LIV series, Real Kashmir Football Club (RKFC), has been nominated for International Emmys in the Best Drama category.

Mahesh's obviously happy. Guessing, more so for the fact that the show, so far as I know, wasn't even up for an intended sequel. "Exactly on what bases do broadcasters decide on [greenlighting] a second season is beyond me," Mahesh says.

A huger reason for universal happiness is what a global nom/nod for RKFC means for Kashmir itself, where the series is set.

Consider a ‘terrorism test', if you may, for a film/show on the Valley, let alone Srinagar, since the 1990s - and tell me, if you've discovered anything in mainstream entertainment that doesn't position strife/militancy as its broader premise.

This, from Kashmir, that remained Bollywood's most popular, panoramic landscape since the advent of colour in the 1960s. RKFC attempts to alter that notion. Even if that doesn't appear perceptibly obvious. The screen, to begin with, looks brighter - the way Srinagar naturally is.

Showrunner Mahesh Mathai

The plot is altogether about football. And it's a true story - about two real-life, local visionaries, Kashmiri Muslim journalist, Shamim Meraj, and Kashmiri Pandit businessman, Sandeep Chattoo who, post the massive, 2014 floods, casually employed football as a means to engage with the idle youth in the community.

They set up a DIY soccer club, RKFC. Almost miraculously, the club went up levels to compete at the national league. They're still going strong, as we speak.

The show is "inspired" by a true story, Mahesh corrects me. What's the difference? The extent to which you can fictionalise/dramatise, of course, besides that they obviously had permission to shoot the lives of the leads, warmly played by Manav Kaul, Mohd Zeeshan Ayub.

Take the young player (cute, curly-haired Afnan Fazli), and his filial financial issues, also to do with his sister (gently luminous, Kangan Baruah Nangia) who, in turn, is getting married… This sub-plot ain't true.

But, as Mahesh says, "The essence of the real story, not based on [individual] facts, but the larger truth, remains [as is]." So do key characters, such as the white coach, based on Scottish star, Davie Robertson, brilliantly played by Mark Bennington.

As you hear expressed in RKFC, it's about purpose & identity, hope & respect. Football is, of course, a popular screen genre in the west. Plenty of predictable tropes repeat, yes.

Yet, any comparison to, say, Ted Lasso, or Welcome to Wrexham, with RKFC, feels immaterial, if not irrelevant. Srinagar/Kashmir is the point.

And nuances within it serve the wider theme. Consider a Hindu kid, whose parents won't allow him to travel, because his teammates are also from Downtown, rather than only Raj Bagh, or Jawahar Nagar. He does eventually join.

Or that the team itself is disinclined to compete at the Army cantonment grounds. They do play. Hence, subtly defying both recent history, and bloodied geography.

I'm told the series originated from Vishakha Singh (also an actor on the show), from a news report, that became a script, with Kilian Kerwin, an American producer focusing on Indian content (Delhi Crime, Ghoul) getting onboard, and Sony LIV roping in Mahesh to see it through.

Mahesh tells me, what struck him, foremost, is you generally associate football with Goa, Bengal, or Kerala. Kashmir, indeed, had a thriving football culture. RKFC's journalist-founder (Mohd Zeeshan Ayub), for instance, talks in the show about how his uncle was a star-player for the transport department.

The setting is 2016. What you don't watch onscreen: it's the year the separatist Hizbul Mujahideen commander, Burhan Wani, was killed by security forces, precipitating the worst unrest in years, even by Srinagar's severe standards, that lasted several months. Full-peak, I suppose, leads to an inevitable trough.

As a happy happenstance, shortly after attending Srinagar's first international film festival recently/September, 2026, I ended up at the city's TRC Turf Ground, dazzlingly floodlit, semi-packed on a weeknight, for a Kashmir Super League football match, between Team Avengers and Swift, beamed live, broadcast-grade, on YouTube.

The atmosphere was electric. So was the quality of the game, what with an international face or two, into the mix of great looking, young, Kashmiris on the ball. Crowds included young girls - some of them disappointed, because they were ‘Swifties', while Avengers won hands-down (3-0)!

Thanks to influential friends, I got invited to the post-match ‘presentation party' to hand over ‘man of the match' award to star, Aheeb Akhtar. On-ground anchor, unable to pronounce my surname, introduced me as Sheikh!

I posted pic on my Instagram, to later check on the app what the ‘real' Real Kashmir Football Club had to say about a show, based on them, landing an International Emmy nomination. Their official page reads: "The world will now see Kashmir through the lens of football." Touché.

Mayank Shekhar attempts to make sense of mass culture. He tweets @mayankw14

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