THE SOLILOQUY OF A WEEPING STADIUM - Vivekananda Yuba Bharati Krirangan - By Dr. Hirak Sen - 29 December 2025

 Tonight I speak in a voice unsteady and low. For on the thirteenth day of December, in the year 2025, I was wounded. Not by time, not by weather, but suddenly and grievously, in a manner I had never foreseen. Lionel Messi, the luminous pilgrim of the game, had stepped upon my soil, and the multitude poured into me like a river in spate, swollen by longing and devotion. When my galleries brim with bodies and breath, when human pulse becomes my rhythm and their murmur my wind, I am most alive. I was built for this communion. They are my purpose, my animating force, the breath within my concrete lungs.

Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, West Bengal Chief Minister Jyoti Basu, and West Bengal Governor Uma Shankar Dikshit inspect a model of the stadium in 1984

I am no ordinary amphitheatre. I was imagined with patience, shaped with reflection, raised with reverence. Concrete and steel are my skeleton and veins. In the 1980s, ships crossed seas from South Korea bearing cement for my making. Reinforcement steel, then scarce and guarded, arrived from factories across India. The slender steel tubes that lift my roof forty-two metres into the sky, a fourteen-storey ascent, travelled from Hyderabad. The corrugated iron sheets that mantle my thirty-five-thousand-square-metre canopy were fashioned in Kolkata, their grains deliberately uneven so that no shard of reflected light might blind a descending pilot. From the crown of my roof, I survey a wide horizon: people in motion, paths unfolding, futures unspooling.

I watch spectators arrive in tides, passing through my many gates, rising along their allotted ramps, climbing stairways, entering my galleries through the wide mouths of my vomitories. Each of my three tiers is served by thirty-six such triads of ramp, stair, and vomitory, an architecture of discipline, a ritual of movement. So exact was this choreography that in 1988, one hundred and forty thousand souls left my embrace in seven swift minutes, exceeding even the computations of my designer. In those moments of perfect fullness, I felt like a mountain resounding with human exultation.

My scoreboards, two vast rectangles each as large as a tennis court, arrived from Hungary in 1987. My floodlights, born in the Netherlands, cast their even glow from the rim of my cantilevered crown, ensuring no player’s shadow would intrude upon the spectacle. My synthetic track, imported from Germany, was laid to the strict measure of the International Olympic Committee. My football field, raised a metre above the earth and threaded with a lattice of drains, can endure a deluge and still return to match worthiness within half an hour. Four great gateways stand prepared for fire engines and ambulances, should misfortune ever demand their passage. One hundred and eight reinforced concrete frames uphold me, their columns resting on piles that reach eight storeys into the body of Mother Earth, so that I do not sink, do not waver. Expansion joints allow me to breathe, to swell and contract, to answer gently to heat and cold.

Bobby Moore asked Hirak Sen about the various facilities at the Salt Lake Stadium, which he inaugurated on 27 January 1984.

Between 1979 and 1987, I was shaped with devotion. In 2017, I was renewed with care. During the FIFA U-17 World Cup, I stood at my zenith, restored and radiant. Thousands of hands gave themselves to my becoming: politicians and planners, engineers and architects, masons and welders, plumbers, electricians, gardeners, labourers. Their skill and sweat live within my beams and slabs. I carry their legacy in every span.

I am vast. I remember the day in 1984 when Raja Bhalindra Singh, former President of the Indian Olympic Association, entered my expanse, escorted by Dr Hirak Sen, my Principal Designer, whose vision shaped my soul. The Raja looked around, paused, overcome by the immensity before him, and whispered, “This is huge, Dr Sen.” I heard him. Somewhere deep within my steel-ribbed heart, I smiled.

I have hosted many legends. Bobby Moore, who once lifted the World Cup at Wembley, inaugurated me in 1984. Maradona, Ronaldo, Messi, Mbappé, titans of the game, have traced their arcs across my turf. Messi himself had come to me twice before that grievous day. India’s finest footballers have called me home.

I have also resonated with the voices of Amitabh Bachchan and Shah Rukh Khan, when spectacle transformed my arena into a carnival of light and laughter. On those nights, my vast womb brimmed with humanity, and I shone like a lantern set upon the city.

For decades, my record remained unbroken: no stampede, no vandalism, no anarchy. I grew into an emblem of Kolkata, one of its two great monuments: one of marble, one of concrete, myself. I am not inert matter. I am a living presence, a jeeta jagta mother of football and athletics in this land.

Beyond that, I stand as a sign of civilisation. As the Colosseum once stood for Rome, gathering grandeur and multitude into stone, so do I stand here, a modern amphitheatre of aspiration. For forty years, tens of millions have passed through me, carrying their hopes and leaving their echoes behind.

Then came the thirteenth of December. Messi entered, encircled by bodyguards. My galleries were overflowing, filled with people, some of whom had travelled from far states, who had paid dearly for a place within my walls. Yet those who wielded power over the event had not foreseen the eventualities. The multitude could scarcely behold the man they had come to see. Sightlines were not at fault; every seat commands a clear view. The failure lay elsewhere. Too many unexpected bodies clustered around Messi. Unease thickened the air. Anger crackled like dry undergrowth awaiting flame. Water bottles, heavy and cruel, were hurled from the heights. Bucket seats were torn from their moorings and flung into the arena. Barriers splintered. Gates shattered. Within fifteen minutes, Messi was hurried out, though he was meant to remain for ninety. The crowd erupted into a wild tandava. The event disintegrated. I was left scarred, shaken, violated.

A Special Investigation Team now seeks the guilty. Was it the promoter, the politicians, the police, the prashasan, the public, the players, the peddlers, the pushers? I will not wander that maze. Justice will choose its own road.

But who will look upon me?
Who will tend my wounds?
Who will restore my dignity?

I weep. Can you not hear the tremor in my voice? I am bruised and broken. I shiver and grieve. My scoreboards and luminaires, my galleries and vomitories, my ramps and staircases, my frames and foundations, my roof itself, all lie in mute distress. Those thousands who once built me now stand aghast, mourning what has been done.

Mother Earth felt my pain and answered through the piles that reach eight storeys into her depths. She whispered endurance into my bones, reminding me that those who bear pain are the ones who remain.

When the winter wind from the north passes through the hollow throats of my vomitories, it sounds like weeping willows. Willows bend and spring back. I do not bend. I endure. And so the hurt cuts deeper.

Please heal me. Restore me. While I am restored, and I hope that it will be soon, please also examine the ageing steel tubes that uphold my immense roof; four decades have weighed upon those thin-walled tubes, and renewal may be due.

I appeal to the highest authority: return me to the strength and grace I possessed before that tragic day.

Epilogue

As my lament faded into the night, a white owl, sacred vahana of Goddess Lakshmi, descended upon a luminaire fourteen storeys above the earth. It was the night of 19 December 2025. Paush Amavasya. The moon absent, darkness complete. The owl sat in stillness. Her eyes, lanterns of the night, surveyed the silence below. No rodent stirred. Even the shadows seemed to pause. Then she called out, hoot hoot hooooo, summoning the autumn clouds drifting like cotton through the sky. The clouds halted, attentive.

“O cloud,” the owl murmured, “behold the sorrow of VYBK. She groans in anguish. I have heard her soliloquy and held it in memory. Carry it with you. Place it in your boundless vault, the one they call cloud storage. Let all who seek it find it.”

And so my lament rose into the cloud, into memory and myth, into the minds of those who may yet answer my call. Perhaps those who matter will hear. Perhaps I shall rise again, renewed, to serve millions more in the decades ahead. I wait, hope folded like a prayer within my trembling heart.