The Hindu : Andhra Pradesh News : People’s games in costly times

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Friday, Jun 13, 2008
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Andhra Pradesh

Andhra Pradesh

People’s games in costly times

S. Harpal Singh

Modern sports have obliterated indigenous ones

Compulsion of costly kits places restrictions on free participation
These games are called peoples’ games because they hardly cost anything

Accessible games: Youngsters play the ‘kur-ghodi’ game at Gandhi Park in Adilabad on Thursday.

ADILABAD: The rapid and modernistic evolution in all spheres of life in India has caused even the sporting activity to take on a ‘foreign’ and ‘elitist’ hue. A chance sighting of a few youngsters indulging in an ‘indigenous’ game in the Gandhi park in Adilabad town helped underscore the difference between the modern and the traditional in sporting activity.

Popular games like cricket, football, hockey, volleyball and many other modern sporting events have obliterated the indigenously developed sports and games even in the countryside. However, the compulsion of costly kits and costumes places a kind of restriction on free participation of the common man.

The youngsters in the picture are playing the ‘kur-ghodi’ game that apparently developed from the ‘uchak-billi’ or ‘kappa-dunkudu. Two teams of equal numerical strength participate by turn in this game that tests the weight bearing capacity of bent members as their opponents jump sit on their backs.

Various games

There was the ‘jhad-bandar’ game involving individual players with no numerical restriction. A twig used to be hurled over a distance from under a tree by one player. Before the twig was brought back by some other player, the person whose turn it was to serve the ‘dav’ needed to catch at least one of the other participants who usually climb the tree to evade him.

The arrival of the small rubber ball in the rural areas helped the game of ‘maram-peeti’ or ‘mar-peet’ and ‘ingorcha’ evolve in the 1960s. In the latter game the ball was used to disturb a small vertical stock of flat stones by any one individual.

The person whose turn it is to take ‘dav’ should rearrange the stones. The longer it takes for him to rearrange the more risk he faces of being hit with the ball by the other team members.

As changing construction material brought the iron rods to the villages, the game of ‘salakha’ also evolved with it.

The individual serving the dav needed to jump cover the entire distance on one leg from the place his opponent failed to get the iron rod stick in the loose earth to the starting point. This game was played mostly in the rainy season.

All these games can be called as peoples games because they hardly cost anything.

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