Games of old

As I wondered what to post given the lull in cricket action, my thoughts wandered to the more exotic games we played as kids. I wanted to make a short post with a couple of lines on the games I remember being fascinated with, even if for a short time. As I began writing, I wanted to add more and more detail, reliving those memories in the process.

Maaram-Peeti - All that was needed for this game was a rubber ball and a bunch of players. Whoever has the ball in hand can freely hit the others with it, no questions asked. When the ball falls to the ground, anyone can grab it. The game involves constant careful judgment, you either reach the ball before the others or decide to run out of hittable distance. Of course, sometimes your judgment fails and you run the risk of ending up really close to the ball-wielder. There are different ways of trying to handle this situation, in order to escape a stinging blow. If you fancy your swiftness and cunning, you can run away, making sudden and random changes in direction, hoping to cause the ball-wielder to miss. Alternatively, you can stand face to face, backing yourself to pull off a Matrix type evasion or psyche the attacker into a wild, misdirected throw. It was implicitly macho to refuse to express pain or rub the unfortunate body part which received the latest painful blow. Also rated favorably was showing off the red/blue patches of skin suffered from the champion's[1] throw, but only after the game ended. In 4th and 5th standard, my gang at school was addicted to this brutal, but ultimately beautiful game. We would play: when we got off the school bus till it was time for the 9am assembly, during the 15 minutes of the 11am interval, during the 30 mins of the 12:30pm lunch break after quickly finishing our lunch in 5 minutes, during any "free periods" and finally during the 45 minutes of the 3:00pm PT period.

Gilli-Danda - One summer, we (a bunch of cousins and the 10 year old me) went to an uncle's place in Nizamabad. This uncle worked in the sugar factory there and lived in quarters which were surrounded by trees and bushes. Their maid's son was also our friend and a lively, enterprising guy. He fashioned a grippy danda and flippy gilli out of a tree branch. It was unbelievable, someone making a gilli-danda set just for us! To get started, we draw a circle(with danda length as radius) on the ground and in its center scrape out a small depression, about 5inches long and 2 inches deep, the width according to the thickness of the danda. Players take turns as the striker (danda bearer) in round robin fashion and the rest are catchers. The catchers stand a certain distance away from the circle in an appropriately chosen direction. The striker places the gilli perpendicular to the depression, turns his[2] back to the catchers, stands with his legs on either side of the prostrate gilli and sliding the danda into the depression, flicks the gilli as far as he can. One of the catchers will then throw the gilli back aiming for the circle. If the throw lands the gilli inside the circle, then the striker loses his coveted position and has to hand over to the next in line. If it lands outside, he has a chance for scoring. As the experienced ones among you know, the gilli has conical edges and when the danda comes down on one of these, it jumps up suddenly, making whirring somersaults in the air. To be able to score, the striker has to control the danda's blow in a way that the gilli rises up close to him, at a height and distance allowing a free swing. As the gilli climbs and then falls, the danda bearer braces himself to aim a mighty blow to send it flying, to land as far as possible. Advanced players will try and tap the gilli lightly a few times, while keeping it within reach before unleashing the long shot. The rule is that that the score gets multiplied by the number of successful taps. Now, everyone goes to where the gilli has landed and the danda-dhaari claims a score, which is the distance in danda lenghts to the circle of origin. If the rest are satisfied, the score is granted. If in doubt, they will actually measure the distance out with the danda. If the distance exceeds the score, it is given. If it falls short, the striker has to swallow the danda lengths by which the score fell short. Failing which, he gets a zero score in addition to conceding possession of the danda.

Kattelata (stick game) - I must have been about fifteen, when my neighbor Samson[3] introduced this peculiar game to our galli gang. Players held longish sticks in hand and there was a smaller stick that lay on the ground. One player was the denner, trying to get others out. The rule was that players with sticks would hit the smaller stick wherever they wanted and everyone followed it. The catch was that you had to keep your stick in contact with a granite stone. If the denner touched you without such contact, then you were out and would become the denner. And you could not carry any stones, only "naturally occuring" ones on the roads were acceptable. Some unfortunate denners would follow the stick the whole day, ending up kilometers away from our galli. So would the others, but with entirely different feelings.

[1] The champion was the guy who had the sharpest throw. He also seemed to combine it with great accuracy and hit rate.

[2] This post might be misconstrued as being sexist, but I have never seen girls/women play these games. However, I believe that some of them, somewhere have.

[3] Samson must have been around 25 then. He was into "body-building" and was indeed in great shape, six pack and all. He also had long hair, which he tied into a pony on occasion. It must have been a meeting of minds for the two of us, even though my parents were very concerned and puzzled at how I could be friends with someone "not of my age group" and worked as a machined tool cutter.

PS: Very likely you have memories of some no-one-else-played-this and/or not-so-common-nowadays games. Do share.

Update: I've changed description of maaram-peeti technicalities to present tense (What? Nobody cares? Shut up!) since I have a gut feeling it is still widely popular. Gilli-Danda too, no doubt. Kettelata, I feel was too rare to still remain extant. But how much do we city-bred mongrels really know?