“My name is Paul and I am here to teach you a new game from my country, called rugby," – The opening lines of actor Stewart Wright, who is portraying a character of Paul Walsh – the person behind the underprivileged kids from Odisha’s tribal area winning a global tournament in Rugby – in a trailer of a movie Jungle Cry, based on a true story of the tribal kids conquering the world. 

Jungle Cry was released in Europe on May 20 and will be streaming in India on OTT platform from June 3. 

Paul was a diplomat at British Deputy High Commission in Kolkata, but he quit his job to work in empowering the kids from underprivileged & disadvantaged groups through rugby.

“I came across an article that a London-based NGO TourAid was organizing a global tournament of rugby in September 2007. I requested them to include an Indian team in their tournament. Eventually, they agreed and we got a chance to field a team,” recalls Paul, 52. “I run a rugby programme with the street kids in Kolkata. So, initially, I thought of making a team from Kolkata. But making their passport was a big challenge, as they didn't have any official documents like age proof, parents identity, etc, and we had only four months left for the tournament," recalls Paul.

"I don't want to miss the opportunity and zeroed down on Kalinga Institute of Social Sciences (KISS), Bhubaneswar, – free residential educational institute for tribal run – where some of the kids were earlier introduced to tag rugby – played without any physical contact. And being a residential school, we would easily get a good number of boys to raise the team.”

When Paul discussed the idea with the institute's founder professor Achyuta Samanta, he (Samanta) was quite optimistic and instructed the KISS sports teacher Rudraksh Jena to scout the talent.

Bollywood actor Abhay Deol is playing the character of Rudraksh. 

“None of the boys at the Institute had ever seen the rugby ball before, so, the scouting was done on the basis of endurance and their proficiency in any outdoor sports. Rudraksh shortlisted 50 boys,” says Paul. 

To be continued (Training of the tribal boys)...