Mohun Bagan’s Edeh Chidi scores his fourth goal in the match against East Bengal on Sunday. (Below) A joyous Chidi after his team’s 5-3 victory that settled a 34-year score. (Pictures by Santosh Ghosh and Gautam Bose)

Calcutta, Oct. 25: Mohun Bagan supporters can no longer be taunted with the “five-finger sign”; 1975 has become just another year.

Die-hards who had vowed never to return to the Maidan since the 5-0 drubbing by sworn enemy East Bengal on Black September 29 that year — giving up a part of their existence — have had a weight lifted off their shoulders.

Their club today exorcised a 34-year-old demon by pumping five goals past East Bengal for the first time in its history, winning an I-League derby 5-3.

Manish Banerjee, a Maidan veteran of 40 years, wept in joy: “It’s revenge. It’s pure magic. I won’t have to die with the shame.”

The revenge may not have been perfect — East Bengal scored three goals and its supporters will no doubt point out the game was once poised 3-3 — but Bagan fans will not care today.

For 34 years, no matter how many times Bagan beat its arch rival, how many tournaments it won, an East Bengal fan just had to say “1975” to end all debate.

Pratik Basu of Baranagar wasn’t even born in 1975 but knows all about it. “It has always been a thorn in our flesh. I was hoping for a win, but five goals!!! I’m not sure I shall see such a match in my life again.”

The game saw the highest number of goals ever scored in a match in an 89-year-old rivalry — marked mostly by cautious 1-0 results — beating the 4-3 Bagan win in 2007.

“I was so happy when the East Bengal stands began emptying after the fifth goal,” a man in Bagan colours returning from the stadium said.

That should answer those who think a Calcutta derby is not the same any more: after all, today’s four-goal hero was Edeh Chidi, a Nigerian — a possibility unthinkable 34 years ago when non-Indians did not play for Bagan. If the 1911 win against British side East York in the IFA Shield final has always been “Independence Day” to Bagan fans, today was surely “I-Day II”.

It should be the opposite for East Bengal coach Subhas Bhowmick, one of the stars of the club’s 1975 victory who scored one and set up two. He now has to live with the pain of being the man who presided over the club’s loss of the most precious feather in its cap. “We beat them 5-0 then… today we lost 5-3 which means we lost by two goals,” he consoled himself.

Fans, however, care little for logic. The 1975 defeat had prodded a young Uma Kanta Paladhi to suicide; today East Bengal loyalist Shambhu Hajra, a man in his 40s from central Calcutta’s Palmer Bazar, suffered a heart attack and was fighting for his life at NRS Medical College.

As East bengal fans blamed goaltender Abhra Mondal for the humiliation, Bhaskar Ganguly, the Bagan goalie who let in four of the goals that day in 1975, recalled: “It’s very difficult to recover from such a match. It will be tough for Abhra… he has to forget and move ahead.”

Ganguly himself had moved on — to East Bengal and stardom — proving what Bagan fans now know: in sport, there’s always another day.