Kabaddi Being Played in a US School

In a gymnasium in Johnsburg, New York — a town of 2,450 in the Adirondack Mountains — American high school students were learning to raid and retreat, chanting "kabaddi" on a single breath while opponents tried to drag them down.

The man behind it was Ajay Kumar Nair, an Indian teacher of English language and literature, spending six months at Johnsburg Central School on a Fulbright Teacher Exchange grant — his first visit to the United States. Alongside his classes, he had since September been running an elective on Indian culture covering literature, music, dance, food, and games. Kabaddi was the games unit, and it required the students to ditch their shoes for traction on the gym floor.

For Nair, the exchange was also personal. He had been introduced to Italian food, American football, and Adirondack snow — the last being, he admitted, the hardest adjustment. Scheduled to return to India on January 28, he described the community as a second family he would miss. A senior in his Indian culture course, Kevin Connor, said learning about the culture and food had been eye-opening.

The story was a small one, but it captured something real about exchange programs: culture travels not in lectures but in games. A few dozen teenagers in upstate New York went home that winter knowing how to play kabaddi — and somewhere, that counted.