Colonialism and globalization have affected us in all kinds of ways. And one of the ways is that in popular culture all the games we talk about is originally not the games that our people played over centuries. Now I am not against any game or popularity of it but I do think like other things the games we played over generations probably have something to do with what developed over the centuries.

You would have heard that during the excavation of the Indus Valley Civilization there were no major finding of weapons but toys of all kinds. Archaeologists found numerous terracotta toys—such as animal figurines, toy carts with wheels, whistles shaped like birds, marbles, dice, and mazes—especially at major urban centers like Mohenjo-daro, Harappa, and Lothal. Considering that Indian subcontinent people have some way related to those play has always been important in childhood and otherwise

 

In this article, I want to bring focus to few games that were partly popular when we were kids in the 90’s. At least one game recently became popular enough by the TV was Kabaddi. But I don’t see kids playing it out even after that around me. Probably as parents we also don’t introduce these games to next generations. We are very fine kids picking up Skating, Basketball, Tennis, Cricket, Football, Badminton, Chess and many others games that are part of global sports. Even a fledgling game like Pickle Ball picks up. We have facilities and coaches popping up around these games.

Pitto Seven Stones

We played Pitto quite a bit and it used to fun. This was played all across India and have different names Lagori, Lingorcha (Maharashtra), Sitoliya (Rajasthan, Bihar) , Dikiro (Andhra Pradesh)  and many more. 

 

Like many traditional games we don’t need an elaborate setup and costly equipment. I think frugality was always a trait :). Rules are also quite simple, two team 5-6 people, one is the breaker and another is defender and they keep switching back and forth. One needs 7 stones stacked like above and soft ball. Once the breaker hit the stack, they need to restack them before defenders hit them on the back or below the knees. Now the game we played all of breakers team need to get hit but there can be variations. 

There was another variation that we played where we replaced stone stack with tin boxes, those days we got Dalda dabbas or ghees dabbas that were not reused by mothers. It was more fun as the stack reached a good height and it was not easy to restack them simply.  

 

For rules please follow this link of Lagori Federation and got to page 45 of this pdf.

 

Hopscotch 

Now we never called the game Hopscotch, if I am not wrong we called it Kith-Kith but there are other names Nondi (Tamil), Kunte Bille (Kannada), Stapu (Punjab) and many others. Here also players needs a flat stone and little flat area to create the grid. It can be played alone or even any number of people. If you have more than 3-4 it takes a lot of time for for the turn to come.

 

As a kid when we used to play this it was a game where both girls and boys can play. Many times parents used to ask boys not to play this game as it was girl’s game but we played and it was fun. When I try to remember how ew played the grid was somewhat different and I can’t remember it well. Anyone aware can comment or write to me at admin@shabdh.com

For more rules go to this link 

 

Now there are many more Ludo, Snakes & Ladders, Marbles, Tops, Gilli Danda, Nadee Parvat, Kho-kho, Langdi Tang, Atya-Patya and many more. I think some of these can be really fun to play. 

 

Here is link for more games

For interested people there is a book by Amitabh Satyam and Sangeeta Goswami called The Games India Plays