In the city once again to raise funds for her foundation, Thumshirn was seen at the MHAL stadium on Thursday paying a close eye on the Super Division League match between Indian Oil and Rhema Sports.
Andrea Thumshirn is known as the 'autowali' in hockey circles in the city. In a bid to raise funds for her hockey school in Rajasthan, the German halted at the MHAL stadium during a charity drive in a rickshaw from Jaipur to Goa back in 2011. Four years on, the number of hockey villages by her Hockey Village India Project has increased from two to five. She may have given children in Rajasthan a reason to take up hockey, but the number of centers might have been more had it not been for red-tape by the Indian government.
In the city once again to raise funds for her foundation, Thumshirn was seen at the MHAL stadium on Thursday paying a close eye on the Super Division League match between Indian Oil and Rhema Sports. She may have been all smiles marvelling at the astro-turf in her black tank top and blue denims but the 41-year old still has a bone of contention with the Rajasthan government.
"You can't compare the Mumbai and Rajasthan hockey associations. There has hardly been any government support from them. There have been times where our teams have been disallowed from district tournaments because of me not having a proper passport. I have been targetted as a foreigner on numerous occasions. The amount of red-tape seen is astounding. If it's not the government, the villagers might give you a problem. I had imported a second hand sand filled astro turf from Germany two years back in June. I have the land and money for the ground, but then the citizens of the nearby city Mandawar were filing an objection against me," said Thumshirn who is also the sports director of Kooh Sports.
If the government was't enough, it was the caste system and 'white skin' mentality shown by Indians that left her flummoxed. "There were kids I had who didn't sit and play with other kids. It was very new, at the time strange for me. Also, a lot of people gossiped. They thought I would take these kids away to Germany and sell them, or even sell their kidneys. Plus I wasn't one of their own. I was treated like an alien. Language was always a barrier, but thankfully I had my volunteers who could communicate in Hindi," said Thumshirn
Thumshirn, a former junior hockey player with the national team who, goes on to add that the culture and mannerisms in the Rajasthani village served as a learning experience for someone who came here to teach. "I learnt about folk music, the way the women dressed. I couldn't wear a tank top at the start. Shorts were a complete no-no. You can't do it in a place where the women cover their faces. I had to get used to eating vegetarian food. The men used to drink the cheapest of alcohol but I raised a lot of eyebrows when I used to get beer from Jaipur and have a sip."
Thumshirn thanks her German roots and her hockey community back home for being her support system that provides most of the funding for her foundation. "We have a lot of former and current brand ambassadors back in Germany. Your hockey captain Sardar Singh is an ambassador as well. If we're talking figures, we raise around 90,000 euros annually. We do take a 5-10 kids to Germany where they play local leagues there," adds Thumshirn whose Hockey Village India Project now caters to over 250 kids in five centers (two each in Rajasthan and Goa, one in Maharashtra).
"We teach these kids in the 10-16 age bracket English and their state language in the morning followed by hockey in the afternoon. Despite the Rajasthani villages being very conservative, we have a lot of girls who come play hockey. All that the parents want is their child to return home before sunset," says Thumshirn who renovated the temple in Garh Himmat Singh, one of the five centers, to construct a school.
Thumshirn's love affair with Rajasthan was no coincidence. Being the owner of a tourism company that sent Germans to India on trips, the Berlin resident happened to stop by at Dausa on her way to Jaipur in 2011. "The village (Garh Himmat Singh) was so primitive that I just felt I needed to make a difference here. We had made a halt for lunch and it were the kids there who caught my eye. They just didn't have a sport to play. I spoke to the panchayat there and learnt that there wasn't even a school. That was all the motivation I needed to make a change. The ground there isn't very big, it's the size of the D tha twe have in hockey grounds," says Thumshirn who has done her Masters in Tourism and Hospitality from Berlin.
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