As a child, Sangita Kumari, 19, had played hockey with green custard apples or balls chiselled from bamboo roots.

This Diwali, Sangita, now an international-level hockey player and a railways employee, gifted a ball each to 14 children in her village — Karnaguri-Nawatoli in Simdega district of Jharkhand.

Simdega is known as the “cradle of hockey” as it has nurtured many a hockey player, several of them going on to represent India at the Olympics. But the children of Karnaguri-Nawatoli, a tribal village, cannot afford to buy hockey gear. They use small bamboo pieces as sticks and use green custard apples or bamboo roots shaped into orbs as balls.

“I too began playing the same way as these children do now and thought of making them happy by buying them a hockey ball each,” said Sangita, who is attending the national junior women’s camp in Bangalore and has come to her village during the Diwali break.

Sangita, who will turn 20 next month, played for her district and state before representing the country in Girls’ Under-18 Asia Cup in Thailand in 2016.

Her hockey campaign was interrupted by the lockdown last year but resumed when she was included in the Indian junior team that toured Chile earlier this year.

Sangita Kumari gifts a dhoti to her oldest neighbour Amrit Majhi during her first visit to her village in Simdega after accepting a railway job. Telegraph picture

“We are now preparing for the Women’s Hockey Junior World Cup 2021 to be played in South Africa next month,” Sangita told The Telegraph.

Impressed by her performances on the field, Indian Railway offered Sangita the job of a junior clerk in August this year.

“I was posted at Ranchi but had to go to the Bangalore camp soon after joining,” she said, adding that she was visiting her village for the first time in several months.

Now that she has become the first in Karnaguri-Nawatoli to bag a government job, Sangita has bought hockey balls for the children of her village and a dhoti for Amrit Majhi, her elderly neighbour.

“Her gesture is really impressive as her family is poor and she has a lot of things to take care of,” Hockey Simdega president Manoj Konbegi said. Hockey Simdega is the district hockey association.

Sangita is the fourth of six children of small farmers Lakhodevi and Ranjit Majhi, Konbegi said.

The family is so impoverished that it can afford the higher education of one child at one time. So one of the sisters study in college for a year at Simdega town 35km away while the others help the family in the field and at home. After a year, the one studying drops out and returns so that another sister can study for a year. Those dropping out take readmission when their turn comes again.

“Yes, my father can’t afford to support the educational expenses of all my sisters at once,” Sangita said, adding that things would hopefully improve now that she had started earning and can supplement the family’s income.

“I am equally interested in doing something to encourage the children of my village so that they not only keep their love for the game alive but also make progress,” she said.