For many football fans, the name Talimeren Ao may only ring a faint bell as a quiz question on the first captain of the Indian football team. But for people from Nagaland, his home state, he is still one of the most famous and revered figures in football history. He was the captain of Mohun Bagan and India and carried the Indian Olympic flag at the 1948 London Games. More than 20 years after his death, they still stage two football tournaments in his name and have two sporting venues named after him.
The Story of Talimeren Ao
At the beginning, there will always be Talimeren. The name means the all-glorious or all-mighty in the Ao language, and at 5ft 10in, he had the physique to back it up. Talimeren was a dominating presence in midfield and defense for nine seasons at Mohun Bagan (1943 to 1952), and a team-mate of Sailen Manna and Taj Mohammed at the London Olympics.
The story of this exceptional Naga begins in Changki, his hilltop village in the Ao tribe’s homeland of Mokokchung, Nagaland. His father, Reverend Subongwati Ningdari, was a Baptist missionary who moved the family from Changki to Impur when Talimeren was six or seven. Talimeren took to football in the mission compound, not with a real ball but one made of cloth scraps or sometimes with a wrapped-up pomelo.
The Story of Talimeren Ao: India’s First Football Captain Who Refused Arsenal’s Contract
As a young footballer, he had an appetite for self-improvement. He moved to Guwahati’s Cotton College, where he was the leading all-round sportsman, collecting medals and trophies in athletics, volleyball, and football. After he watched Guwahati’s Maharana Club footballers train on the same ground as his college team, he asked them if he could join. Maharana, Guwahati’s biggest club at the time, turned the Cotton College striker into a defensive midfielder.
Talimeren Ao’s move from Guwahati to Calcutta, the heart of Indian football, came about after he earned a seat at the Carmichael Medical College (the present-day RG Kar Medical College). His friend from Maharana, Sarat Das, brought him over to Mohun Bagan in 1943, where he first paid a “joining fee” before working his way into their first XI. From then, it was juggling his medical studies and making his mark as a player, then on – within a year – to the Bagan captaincy and finally as India captain for the London Olympics and a short tour of Holland.
The Story of Talimeren Ao: India’s First Football Captain Who Refused Arsenal’s Contract
After the Olympics, he turned down a year’s contract with Arsenal and returned to India to continue his studies, earning his MBBS degree in 1950. He went back to Kohima and pursued a career as a surgeon. During the Naga insurgency in the 1970s, he was sought by confrontational adversaries but refused several invitations to join the Indian army. He was committed to his father’s directive to go back to Nagaland and serve the people there.
The Story of Talimeren Ao: India’s First Football Captain Who Refused Arsenal’s Contract
Talimeren Ao’s legacy is not in his medals, trophies, or contracts, but in the memory of his people. He is a proud Naga who returned to his roots, away from the temptations of a more comfortable life in the cities, whether an Arsenal offer or a piece of land in Calcutta that Mohun Bagan wanted to give in order to lure him to stay. Today, he lies resting under a plain slab of concrete and a wooden cross, surrounded by an explosion of foliage and a small patch of water on five acres of old forest land
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