Come on Lyndon, let's Futsal

It’s in the wee hours and a group of boys are returning from some Christmas holidays festivities in their suits and formals. Amongst a few boys, I know is a friend feeding another boy a ross omelet and bread at a gadda at KTC Margao. It feels a little sad to see the boy without his hands and wrists and struggling. Until a cricketer Nagesh introduces the boy, as Lyndon Cardozo, his best friend and he requests us to write about Lyndon and his feat. At the end of the conversation, we’re surprised that 22-year old Lyndon who struggles to hold a spoon to eat, few minutes latter is driving away his friends, who are physically abled. Its then we realize that Lyndon is gifted and definitely needs to be written about.

It’s only a month later that we meet Lyndon again at The King’s School at a Premier Skills football coaching clinic organized by British Council and English Premier League and on the sidelines of the coaching clinic we catch with the talented lad. We offer to drop him off after practice but he proudly tells us he drove himself and has parked in the school parking lot.

“In November 2013 at my hostel in Bangalore, I put my hands into a bucket to check if the water was hot enough for bath. This was around 11.30pm and the heater extension rod was still in the bucket. I was flung back with a terrible electric shock who resulted in amputation of my hands, one above the elbow and the other from the wrists and life was left in shatters,” remember Lyndon, a devout Catholic who shows us his rosary that he believes saved him from the worst.

Studying in his final year, BA in Geology, Lyndon’s been the kind, who immediately got back to studies, though he had to give up his ambitions of becoming a pilot or pursuing aeronautics.

Lyndon remember how quickly in the second week of January 2014 he was back in the gym to get fit again and immediately in June he was back to studies in Goa. And in December 2016 at SMS Indoor Stadium, Jaipur, when Goa won the National Futsal Championship, the attention was on none other than Goa 22-yerar old Lyndon who bagged the Golden Boot award. Moving quickly darting across the stadia and lightening quick feet with no support from his hands, Lyndon was truly a champ. Erased was the memory of an electric shock that almost paralyzed him and took his life.

Lyndon today has put his past mishap, his missed opportunity while studying Aeronautics Engineering from Acharya Institute of Technology, Bangalore and is a happy lad playing sport, studying and enjoying himself while he continues to be an inspiration to everybody with is footballing skills.

We ask him about his disability and he tells us how he has a robotic hand that’s not working and he laughs about and tells us it’s too expensive to repair but his very happy the way his with all his friends support and encouragement since he needs to them to get into his socks and shoes for the futsal games but his always willing to drive them in return.