Traditional Board Games of India

Pallanguli, Mancala - what’s in a name!

2013-06-14T12:26:00.001+05:30

This traditional game, known as Palanguli or Aluguli depending on which southern State of India you come from, is played on specials festive days in Southern India.

It is supposed to be a woman’s game it is usually played as a part of the festive rituals on Shivarathri and Vaikunta Ekadasi days. The game is associated with the heroine of 'Ramayana', the Earth Goddess Sita, who while pining in captivity for her husband, Lord Rama, invents the game of Aluguli
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The game with its religious origins has been popular in almost all middle class households particularly Southern India.

Women were encouraged to play this game since the husbands would go to work either in paddy fields or business at Sunrise and would return only after Sunset. The women to while away the long hours would play this game with other women.

An Aluguli board either in wood or heavy copper and brass was a must in every household

People would look askance if a woman confessed that she played neither the game nor had a game board at home. Short of sending her out into the cold, the hapless woman would be the subject of much discussion. What on earth does she do the whole day till her husband gets back!

The Aluguli or Palanguli game begins with six seeds placed in each cup. The player starting first picks up the seeds from any of her holes and, moving anti-clockwise, places one seed in each hole. If she reaches the end of her cups she goes on the other side of the board.

When the player drops her last seed, she takes the seeds from the next cup and continues placing them in this way. If the last seed falls into a cup with an empty cup following it, the seeds in the cup following the empty cup, are captured by the player

The game which was also very popular along the sea coast of Tamil Nadu also contributed to the game being adopted by traders and sailors who took the game along with them and played on ships or their homelands.

But the point that is interesting that the basic rules kept changing with the place.
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The fact that game board historians have unearthed near identical games across various geographical regions shows that this game must have traveled along trade routes from the time of oral history traditions.

In the Middle east the game was better known as Mancala , which must have had its roots in Aluguli was taken to West Africa by Arab Dhows and from there to the Caribbean countries that lay on the slave trade route.

The game boards have a row of holes or pits and identical counters of either sea shells ( cowries) coloured seeds or coins were and are still used. In a pinch even rounded pebbles and stones have been used as counters.

The object of the game played from West Africa to Barbados seems to have been to capture a majority of counters or empty one or more rows of the opponent.

The point is that various rules seem to have evolved with the playing of the game in different places.

In the island of Seychelles,a game that is similar to Palanguli called ‘Makonn’ in the local language is played. instead of the two rows of pit there are four rows of the pits each.

Close in similarity to the Makonn is a game called ‘Hawali’ played in Mozambique.

There is an interesting twist. Sitting at a bar in the rural outback of some tiny town in Australia, a friend, Guy, who had been a long time resident of Sri Ramana Ashram in Tiruvanamalai in South India, heard what looked like a Tamil dialect behind him.

Wiping the froth from his lips, he turned around and saw three Aborigine men. Said Guy later, their language was remarkably like old Classical Tamil and on a hunch, he pulled out a small Aluguli board out of his rucksack and wondered if the Abos recognised it.

Sure they did and played a game with Guy with rules that looked remarkably like rules of play of Aluguli.

By the way since there are no religious connotations to the game that is being played in the Middle East or the Caribbean or any of the other places on the islands of the Indian Ocean , the game is played by both sexes.

A game at the India Coffee House

2013-06-14T11:49:00.001+05:30

The 'India Coffee House' used to be a landmark on MG road in Bangalore. It was synonymous with Bangalore and its MG road.

The India Coffee House used to be located right next to what was once ballroom and club for English and American servicemen and is now the editorial offices and press of group of dailies that popped out of an arrack business in the late 50s.

The first Coffee Houses were set up in a few cities on the old Presidency towns and were meant to be large kiosks that sold fresh coffee powder and served coffee to the discerning drinker.

The India Coffee House on this iconic road was set up first as a kiosk that sold fresh coffee powder and also catered to the coffee drinker.

For a long time from its inception to as late as 1980, the 'India Coffee House' had a old world charm. The furniture was leather backed settees along the wall, wooden tables with polished tops, covered with a white table cloth. There was a middle row of tables and chairs. with plenty of aisle room and space between tables.

There was even a first floor which was usually occupied by ‘new comers’ while the regulars occupied their regular tables on the ground floor. it was an unwritten rule that you never occupied the seat of the regulars.
Just like the old century old clubs along the Pall Mall.

It was the table at the window, earmarked and unofficially reserved for journalists that is important to our story. There were two tables sort of nudging each other, four chairs facing the leather settee.

The greats of journalism from the daily next door, several correspondents of Delhi dailies occupied this space. Several ashtray filled with half-smoked butts of the top brands of those days like ‘India Kings’ and ‘Wills navy Cut’ in its distinct tins would be placed on the table while a couple of pots of coffee with cups and saucers completed the rest.

No what is this meandering tale of a coffee house doing in a blog about traditional board games of India?

The answer - lf you were to lift one edge of the table cloth and revealed in the deep etching on darkened wood was the diagram of a game of ‘Tiger and goats’ or Aadu Huli aata.

Why this game? Why was it permanently etched into the wood?

Goes back to a heated discussion that is supposed to have taken place in the spring of 1959, between a couple of civil servants and journalists.

The civil servants taking on the journalists and beating them nine games to one. The ability to talk and work at the same time, a hallmark of the journalists proved to be their undoing while the civil servants with years of sitting glued to their desks and looking at the ‘whole picture’ before taking administrative decisions that would send an army of babus scurrying to carry out their orders, helped them take in the whole picture and plot moves that had the journalistic tigers firmly skewered.

There are even tales of a civil servant who had worked for one of the most illustrious Dewans of the Mysore State, flourishing an exquisitely made 320-pack set of Ganjifa Playing cards to the morning walkers who always dropped in for he first 'cuppa' ... and and how the window table saw a game that lasted several hours and over several cups of coffee.

That pack recently surfaced at an Sotheby’s auction!

By the 70s the old guard of journalists and civil servants slowly dropped out of sight their places taken by new hacks and civil servants and businessmen.

The posters that were brand new in the 60s were now sepia coloured - the turbaned man with bushy luxuriant beard, the smiling tribal girls picking coffee berries and a cup of coffee with steam spiralling towards the wooden frames....

The bearers wore the same uniform. Spotless white trousers and long-sleeved thick cotton twill shrts. A large green and gold cummerband, and a sash while on their heads a turban of green and gold colour with the insignia of the Coffee Board.

The Bangalore India Coffee House was established by the Coffee Board on MG Road in 1947.

But the oldest was the one in College Street in Calcutta , set up in 1942 by an Act of the parliament. The then Chairman of the Coffee Board, H G V Reddy, wanted these ‘coffee houses’ to “.... play friend, philosopher and guide to coffee growers and encourage people to drink more coffee....”

When the MG Road Coffee House was started its customers were mainly servicemen from UK and the USA who would frequent the huge wooden floor three storey building that was dance hall and club house before it became a newspaper office.

Initially the menu apart from coffee, was mainly English snacks like bread and butter sandwiches or cucumber sandwiches with an egg either scrambled or sunny side up and mutton or chicken cutlets with a dash of ketchup..

By the 60s, Indian dishes like Idlis and Dosas were added to the menu but the liveried waiters remained.

In the recent past after playing ‘mine host’ to scores of indigent journalists, ( a discreet note would be kept of one’s dues and presented on payday), the India Coffee House vanished closed without any explanation.

The table with the game of Aadu Huli Aata etched survived after it was picked up by one of the senior editors of the daily and now occupies a corner of his living room.

The India Coffee House on College Street and the one in Manakular Vinaya Street in Pondicherry somehow have managed to remain but they are not the hangouts to sit for hours and play a game of Ganjifa or Tigers and Goats.

The Game of Ganjifa

2013-06-13T12:21:00.001+05:30

The very set of rules to play a game of Ganjifa cards were outlined by one Vireshwara, a court physician of Ahmednagar in the early 16th Century.
As in all other cards games, there evolved variations to these rules depending on the region.

Ganjifa is a ‘Trick-taking ‘ game. Similar in some ways to Contract Bridge or whist. But there are rigid rules about what cards may be led. There are no trumps. There are no obligations to follow Suit if a player cannot win a Trick.

In one half of the Suits, Ten is the highest and One is the lowest. in the other half, the ranking is reversed.

Usually a game of Ganjifa cards involves three players. But when the Suits are 12 or more than four players can sit around for a game.

All cards are dealt out in counter clockwise fashion. The Raja (Mir) of an agreed Suit is lead and along with this card, the player puts down a low value card called ‘Throne.’
With these two cards he winds the first two Tricks.

Now comes the tough part. The rules begin to get more complex about which cards must lead next.
If any player has the highest card in a suit, then he is obliged to play if that Suit is to lead. If he fails to do so, the card loses its value.

As in bridge, the player has to remember which cards have been played.

The four-player ganjifa game which is played in various parts of Orissa has four players grouped in opposing pairs.

A pack of 144 cards is used. The dealer and his partner must win all 36 Tricks. The pair is aided in this by a Rule that required their opponents to discard their highest cards if they cannot follow suit.

One way to figure this out is to get a pack of ganjifa cards and get a set of rules to play the game. One place where you can pick up several Ganjifa card packs is Ramsons Kala Pratisthana, which has an outlet at the well-known Ramsons Handicrafts Emporium in Mysore.

You can even check out the Ramsons website and order online.

Ramsons Kala Pratishtana is a trust set up in 1995 to foster the traditional handicrafts of India and has been conducting annual exhibitions of both handicrafts and traditional board games. If you are going walkabout in Mysore make a beeline to Zoo and bang opposite is Ramsons.

The World of Ganjifa cards

2013-06-13T12:11:00.001+05:30

These are ‘playing’ cards like no other.You will not find them on tables of the great gambling spots of the world. They are circular and painted with religious or quasi-religious motifs that may be completely alien to the western player.

You cannot slip an extra Ace under the sleeve of your jacket or in the collar at the back of your neck or keep it snug along with your spring action Derringer along you forearm hidden by the large sleeve of your baggy coat. .

Having said that and hopefully stopped you from packing a pack of 320 or 96 cards in your carpet bag and heading to that off-shore floating casino where you could interest other high rollers in a game of cards and hopefully clean them up, a brief recap of the history of these Ganjifa cards is necessary to convince you that it is going to be mighty uncomfortable to stash a couple of major cards.

‘Ganj’ means ‘ Treasury’ in Persian and there is mention of this word in connection to a card game in the Emperor Babur’s memoirs. In the Rubaiyat-i-Ganjifa of the Persian poet Ahli Shirazi ( 1514 or -15 or thereabouts) there is mention of a 8-suited pack.

This is better known as Mughal Ganjifa pack and Shirazi records the names of 8 suits : Ghulam (Servant), Taj (Crown), Shamsher (Sword), Asrafi ( gold coins), Chang (lamp), Barat ( document), Tanka (silver coins) and Qimash (merchandise).

Mughal Ganjifa pack consists of 96 cards ( 8 suits of 12 cards each ), 10 of each suit are number cards and 2 are court cards - the Mir ( King) and the Wazir ( Minister).

Then there is the Mysore Chamundeswari Chad ganjifa which is said to have been devised by Mummadi Krishnaraja Wadiyar III, a king whose name is revered among board game masters across the world. This Chamundeshwari Chad consists of 320 cards. Sixteen suits each of 18 cards plus a further 25 depicting different goddesses and seven with a swan motif.

Each of the 16 suits has a presiding deity and includes the patron goddess of the state of Mysore, Chamundeshwari and the gods Shiva, Vishnu, Krishna, Rama, Brahma , Indra and Ganesha.

The suits are based on a variety of themes that included the signs of the zodiac, the Dikapalas ( guardians of the 8 points of the compass) and the Navagraha ( the 9 planets of Indian astrology).

The Mysore Chamundeswari Chad-Ganjifa cards owe their existence to king of the erstwhile Mysore kingdom, Maharaja Krishnaraja Wadiyar the Third. The king who was better known as Mummadi, was literally ‘deposed’ by the English who kept him on a powerless titular head, spent his days devising various board games including complex variations to Chess and other mathematical puzzle games.

The King who according to the story handed down from Palace flunkeys, is said to have locked himself in a huge room on the fourth floor of Jaganmohana Palace and awaited the manifestation of the God Krishna who sat with for hours playing a variety of board games. To this day the king is forgotten in his once royal kingdom but is revered in the esoteric world of international board game experts as the Ultimate Master of Board Games.

The king according the copious notes that he kept, took the usual Ganjifa cards and improvised on them. The card packs ranged from 36 to 320.

But somehow the King's variations of the game of cards never really took off outside the Palace or for that matter in India. The popularity being confined to the four walls of the Palace.

The Rajasthan Ganjifa which is popular to this day is a variation of the Mughal ganjifa but the motifs used are Rajasthani icons, gods etc. The Mirs are depicting sitting on thrones while the Wazirs are all on horseback except the Wazir of Ghulam who is shown riding an ox, the Wazir of Chang is shown riding a camel while the Wazir of Surkh is depicted riding a tiger.

The Sawantwadi Dashavatara Cards are unique to the region of Sawantwadi in Maharashtra. Sawantwadi looks like an extension of one of the quaint Goan Portuguese regions.and Panaji is a mere 50 km away.
The place with its huge typical Portuguese style colonial bungalows with Hindu motifs , there are coconut groves all over the place and tiny eating tavernas dotted along winding roads.

Apart from an exquisite Malwani cuisine of fiery fish curry and rice, Sawantwadi is also known as a centre for the manufacture of what is known as Dashavatar ganjifa cards.

These are painted and lacquered cards and indeed the very first card in the Dashavatara pack is the one with the Vishnu incarnation as Matsya. The card brought back memories of various fish curry and rice meals that one had across the North and South Goa including Sawantwadi!

There are two types of ganjifa cards manufactured here. One is the Bazar style which is meant for ordinary playing a and the other is the ‘Darbar Kalam’ which was meant for use at the Royal court or by those of the Sawantwadi gentry.

The original 8-suit Mughal style of cards was adapted and improvised to suit Hindu tastes by increasing the number of suits.

The suits are based on the 10 incarnations of Vishnu. Thus, there is the Matsya suit with its fish motif, the Kurma ( Tortoise) suit, Varaha ( Boar or conch shell) suit, the Narasimha ( Lion) suit, Vamana ( Dwarf ) suit, Parashurama ( axe motif) suit and the Rama suit (with the three motifs of monkey, bow and arrow ).

Then the players can choose any two from the following suits: Krishna, Jaganatha and Buddha suits. The tenth suit is Kalki with the sword and horse motif.

One other place where Ganjifa cards are still used in play more than anywhere else in the country is Orissa’s district of Paralkhmudi.

The ganjifa cards are known as Ramayana Ganjifa ( Ganjapa in Oriya language ) which is a eight colour pack ( ath rangi sara ). These 12 suited pack includes depictions on the cards of Karikeya and Ganesh while the 16-suit cards have paintings of Shiva, Brahma, Yama and Indira.

All Ganjifa cards whether the earlier Mughal, or the Rajasthani, the Orissa and the Mysore cards were made of papier-mache on stiffened cloth. They were all painted by hand. Vegetable dye colours were used for the court cards while the commoners variety used the western oil and watercolour paints.

There is also one unusual set made from Ivory. These cards which are 80mm in diameter and have been dated 1760 and are said to have belong to Robert Clive, the East India Company Governor-General who systematically went about pillaging the country of its riches apart from foisting false cases on unsuspecting natives and getting them strung up the nearest gallows.

More information about these ivory cards are to be found in ‘ Treasures of India: The Clive Collection at Pois Castle’ by Mildred Archer, Christopher Rowell and Robert Sketon (Eds).

The main centres for the cards were Bishampur in West Bengal, Nirmal in Andhra Pradesh and Parlakhmudi, Raghurajpur and Sonepat districts of Orissa. Needless to say people in all these places still play Ganjifa card games.

‘Desi’ Promotion games

2013-06-11T12:22:00.000+05:30

The word, ‘Desi’ is peculiarly Indian and means, ‘ Native’ not in the sense of ‘Native’ but sort of the old ‘Homeboy’ kind of tag!

The ‘Desi Promotion’ phenomena has been in existence in India since God only knows when. The use of connections and donations as well as consulting the local astrologer who usually happened to be a retired government official and now spent his time arranging matrimonial alliances and ‘fixing the connections.’

Maybe things are different know since I have just stepped temporarily out of a time wrap from the world of novelist R K Narayan’s Malgudi.

Since ‘ promotions ‘ or who has been kicked upstairs or who has been booted downstairs is to us Indians like blood is to a vampire, then the ancient Chinese promotion game known as ‘ Cai Xuan’ or ‘ Selection through Dice Combinations’ should be a hit in the subcontinent.

It is believed that the game was invented by a senior Chinese Mandarin of the Tang period in 872CE.
The anecdotal tale is that Li Hei, for that is the Mandarin’s name, was taking a stroll along the banks of a river with the well-known courtesan, Ye Mao Li..

They spoke of this and that, composed a couple of verses and Ye Mao Li asked what it was with all those young Mandarins being obsessed with promotions. Li Hei gave her a windy lecture which Mao Li published as ‘Analects of Li.’

Li Hei cheesed off at what the lady did with what he considered was his copyright, promptly devised what he called, ‘ Dice selection game.’ That is choosing an employee based on how the the dice fell.

Nothing new since some of the great Indian business family follow this technique to this day and do not give a hoot if the applicant is connected closely to the family and has done a stretch at Stanford.

Following Li Hei’s game, another Mandarin and scholar Fang Qian Li invented a similar game though with minor variations, called ‘ Touzi Xuan-ge’ or ‘Rules for the Selection through Dice.’

Scholar Fang’s game came out of the realisation that 90 per cent of the lakhs of civil service applicants who were posted in various corners of the Chinese empire felt that it was all a matter of luck being promoted or being demoted to a tiny island where apart from the unlucky mandrin ,the only other inhabitants were a couple of Taoists priests under a vow of silence.

Fang’s game soon became a hot hit with the bureaucracy and off duty mandarins and those taking a tea break, instead of going to the Tea House of the August Moon, would head to the nearest park where they would play Touzi Xuan-ge.

The players would sit around the board and take turns rolling out a pair of dice whose fall would determine where they began on the bureaucratic ladder and then with subsequent throws of the dice would either get promoted or demoted and get stuck

. But since the game was fixed to end after 25 rounds of throws, the winner would be the player to first reach the position of Chancellor that was inscribed in the last square. Or he could be Chief Secretary or Grand Secretary and so on.

There was another promotions game called, Sheng guan-tu or ‘Official Promotions Game ‘ that would have been ideal for us Indians.

The winner of this so-called race game would win all the money in the common kitty and what is more the losers were expected to ‘congratulate’ the winner with a certain number of units of cash each.

Very, very, familiar to many of us in the Indian sub-continent.

All this brings one to the question why not have a new Indianised Promotions Game?

It is time to approach the organisers of the ‘Kreeda Kaushalya Mela’ ( Traditional Board Games annual Fest) , the well-known Ramsons Kala Pratishtana (RKP) of Mysore. at their Pratima Gallery in Mysore.

The force behind RKP is the pair of Cherryble Brothers better known as R G Singh and Raghu Dharmendra who are related but work in perfect tandem and they ought to be the right persons to devise a game like this one.

Like the mandarins, the babudom ( from 'babu' a nomenclature for the government official ) would take the game to its collective heart.

What is more this game ought to give them more time to goof off while working out the permutations and combinations of the dice being thrown and whether they would be promoted or not!

‘Nirvana’ is the name of the game

2013-06-10T11:47:00.001+05:30

Back in the heady Woodstock days of the 60s, 'Nirvana' meant backpacking to India, head for the hills, look out for a guru, pick up your secret mantra and crash out. Or get so stoned that one is in a state of permanent levitation.

This Nirvana that we are talking about is more sophisticated yet it does not involve sitting at the feet of learned Vedic Pandit and spending years immersed in Vedanta
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This is something like the Zen Koans and the right answer could lead to instant Satori. Or Nirvana if you prefer it.

This is the plain old Snakes and Ladders game that is catholic in its appeals across the globe and is still played in many parts of the would yet untouched by game-stations.

There is the variant snakes and ladders that is played by Jain, a sect that has successfully married mamon with spiritual growth. This game called, Gyan Chaupar, is played on a huge board and each of the squares has a moral inscription or sometimes a religious quotation. The journey from the start to finish is peppered with squares that elevate you or bring you down a peg or two.

The lower squares on the Gyan Chaupar board are concerned with visions of hell while the upper squares depict various stages of spiritual growth.

For instance there is a square which is inscribed ‘ Mercy’ and if the player’s throw of the pair of dice lets him move his counter to this ‘Mercy’ square then he is led up the ladder to the square known as “Abode of Brahma.”

But if the throw of the dice lands him on the square with the inscription ’Egoism’ which is depicted with the all manners of diverse symbols along with the head of a snake, then its down the snake’s mouth to spiral down to the square ‘Illusion.’

The players discover that each throw of the dice can lead them along the path that is full of rapidly changing fortunes till he reaches liberation in the ‘Abode of the Supreme Deity.’

But it is not just the Jains but several other sects and regions have their own variation, like the ‘Mokshapatamu’ which is still played in several of the villages of Andhra Pradesh.

‘Mokshapatamu’ can be defined as Moksha meaning Liberation and Patamu meaning Lesson. Simple and direct.

There is of course the ancient Tibetan game which goes by the long-winded name of Determination of the Ascension of Sages. ’ This game too is a practical lesson on how to traverse the path of Liberation.

The Sufi variation of the snakes and ladders which is said to have devised by Amir Khusru is known as Shatranj-al-arifin’ or the ‘ Chess of the Gnostics,’ and leads one from wayward enticements of the devil to union with god.

But it is not just in the Middle East or the Indian sub-Continent that this game was popular, variations taken to the US and to the UK resulted in the creation of games that not only became popular parlour games for the whole family but served as moral lessons. Beat the Sunday morning Bible class anyday!

The game of Kismet which is also a variation of snakes and ladders was popular in the US when the Protestant work ethos was at its peak.

Thus these Kismet boards had squares with the traditional ladders and snakes but the squares themselves were inscribed with moral precepts like ‘Penitence,’ ‘Kindliness,’ ‘Pity,’ ‘Depravity,’ ‘Cruelty,’, ‘smoking’ and so on and so forth.

In UK there was this game called, ‘Top of the School.’ This too was similar to the aforementioned games but the board was rectangular. Each square was a graphic depiction of the eventful life of an English School Boy. ( Of the vintage of Tom Brown or Mallory Towers and Greyfriars etc !).

Each of the squares showed various sporting implements like a cricket bat, wickets, fishing rod and football which corresponded to ladders while other squares showed brooms, cane, jampot, dunce cap etc corresponded to snakes.

The message was clear.

The school boy was expected to show good sporting behaviour, be a good sport, play the game with a straight bat and be good at studies. All these qualities then led the player to the last square which was inscribed ’ Top of the School.’

Incidentally one is given to understand that two new forms of Snakes and Ladders are in the offing and in particular applicable to the Indian Subcontinent.

One is called ‘Playing with a straight bat ‘and is reported that all wanne- be cricketers and those already playing would be expected to be proficient in this game.

The other it is reported would be called, “ Aya Ram, gaya Ram.’ Named after a popular politician, this game is meant for all politicians and wanne-be politicians and is expected how difficult it is be a statesman and how easy it is to be a politician.

Tashi Daleck! It’s Norbu’s Game of Liberation!

2013-06-08T13:45:00.003+05:30

Bylukuppe in the Kodagu or Coorg district of the Indian State of Karnataka is home to the largest Tibetan settlement with some 20,000 residents and some 5000 monks studying in the ancient Sera Jey and Sera Mey Monasteries.

Sera Jey and Sera Mey were ancient when they were in Tibet till the Chinese razed to the ground when they invaded Tibet.

The monasteries at Bylukuppe are actual, gargantuan replicas right down to the original Tangkas, huge images , lamps and butter offerings to Avalokiteshwara!

But for the 5000 monks in varying degree of classes it is not it is not all studying and learning by-heart ancient Sanskrit and Tibetan texts or preparing for the debates which is astounding since it involves some amount of physical mayhem, yelling and shoving... . Well, you go to see it for yourself.

Call on Dolma who is charge of the Tibetan office of the Tibetan Government in exile and she will make the necessary arrangements.

Hanging out with some Tibetan punks with green and yellow hair in one of the tiny restaurants on the main street ( Camp 1) , one found that the two huge Mongolian monks at the next table were, between wolfing down great heaps of mince-filled momos, playing a game that looked suspiciously like snakes and ladders.

Most of the 5000 monks are Tibetan, a few from Mongolia, several Chinese, some Scots and even a couple of Americans. Many of them do not speak English even the westerners who prefer Tibetan to their native drawl.

The conversation with the Mongolian monks was brief. ‘Snakes and ladders?’ A vehement shake of collective shaven heads.

Later talking to one of the senior Geshes ( A Geshe is a doctoral scholar) one came to know that what the Mongolian monks were playing, was the ‘Game of Liberation.’

The game is said to have been created by a Tibetan Master, Chogyal Namkhai Norbu who based his invention on an even more ancient game called, ‘ Determination of the Ascension of Sages.’

It is believed that this game was inspired by a similar game invented by the great thirteenth century master Sakya Pandita from India. Something like the Shaolin kung fu being taught first by a monk from India well versed in Kalaripayat, the oldest martial arts in the world and has its origins in Kerala.

Geshe Tenzin, guide and counselor, as scrawny as a vulture on a fad diet, said that this game was meant to ‘increase one’s understanding of the various dimensions of our human condition.’

At the library of Sera Jey Monastery in Lama Camp four, one discovered that this game, ‘ Determination of the Ascension of Sages’ is meant to be played so that one could come to terms with various aspects of our all too human condition.

The game consists of a board with 108 dimensions or spaces or squares, some playing pieces and a booklet telling the players where they should place their tokens, which could be literally anywhere, ranging from the Dharmakaya to the ‘Hell of Diverse Desires,’ or any place in-between.

This is unlike other spiritual or temporal snakes and ladders where you begin from square one and go on falling and getting up till you reach the final goal.

In the 'Determination of the Ascension of Sages’ the object of the game is to reach the Dharmakaya, or liberation. To do this each player throws the dice and places the playing piece on the indicated dimension space, and moves from there according to the instructions on the next throw of the dice.

From the higher realms, it is still possible to go to the lower realms, perhaps passing through the human dimension. From the human dimension it is possible to go anywhere, though in stages. All players begin there.

Then depending on the roll of the dice, one goes either up to the Ati yoga path, or any of a number of other paths to liberation, or to the formless or form realms, the bardo, or any one of the six lokas ( worlds).

The game like the snakes and ladders makes it easy to realise that liberation is not a rosy path and how precious are the opportunities are for a fortunate rebirth, and how difficult it is to liberate oneself from lower realms.

But there is a twist here. In accordance with Tibetan Buddhism tenets that one’s liberation is not final till the whole of humanity too is liberated.

This means that this game is played not just by two or one but several players.

This Tibetan Buddhism game also seems similar to the Sufi game of Chaupar where some of the canons of Islam and Sufi mystical paths have been integrated to create a path to God.

A closer reading of the works of Amir Khusru and other Sufi saints reveal that the game known as ‘ Shatranj-al-arifin’ or the ‘ Chess of the Gnostics,’ leads one from the wayward enticements of the devil to union with god.

The Maharashtrian saint, Jnaneswar( 1920), used the Gyan Chaupar version of Snakes and ladders in another game invented by him called Mokshapata ( The Board of Enlightenment), to bring “relief to such people who have been afflicted by Samsara.”

Don’t know... but when all is said and done this is a smashing game and a good time can be had by one and all!

Tashi Daleck!

God doesn’t play dice! Or does He?

2013-06-08T13:30:00.000+05:30

Ever since early man, could have been the hunter of the sabre-tooth tiger or any one of the crowd in the movie, ‘10,000BC,’discovered that by chucking a pair of pebbles at the buxom blonde ( She was blonde in the movie) and trying to figure out which way they fell could figure out the mystery of the universe, in other words the contrary nature of women. Nobody has figured out women just like nobody has figured out the Universe!

Our ancient ancestors, and superstitious people to this very day, shared the belief that every event that occurs is ultimately caused by a god or gods.

It was to figure out the omens that our ancestors threw dice. And when bored of trying to figure out answers to questions such as when to go out for a hunt or a mate, decided that dice could also be a part of a game. ‘Two canines of the sabre tooth against your wooly mammoth’s tusk ‘ kind of thing that was decided by the throw of the dice.

In many parts of India and perhaps South Asia, the throwing of dice to decide whether to take a bus journey or solve one of life’s problems is common.

In a letter to Max Bohm, Albert Einstein had written, “ You believe in a God who plays dice, and I in complete law and order.”

Terry Pratchett in ‘ Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch’ writes: “God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players [i.e. everybody], to being involved in an obscure and complex variant of poker in a pitch-dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a Dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time.”

John Ford of the Georgia Institute of Technology further clarifies this statement: “ God plays dice with the Universe. But they are loaded dice. And the main objective of physics is to find out by what rules they dice were loaded and how we can use them for our own ends.”

But does God play with loaded dice? We will never know!

Seers of yore composed a verse that is found in the oldest Vedic text, the Rg Veda. Called ‘ The Gamester’s Lament’ , its goes something like this :

“ The dangling nuts, born where the wind blows the lofty tree,
delight me with their rolling on the board.
The cheering vibhidaka has brought me joy,
like a draught of soma from Mount Mujavant.”

But after this euphoric draught of the intoxicating’ Soma’, the gambler bemoans the loss of his wife and wealth through his addiction.

The Skanda Purana also refers to the use of dice in an early form of backgammon played by the God Shiva and His Consort, Parvathi. In this particular game, the God Shiva is left with nothing except his loin cloth. But of course he casts a spell on the dice and plays to win!

The great Indian epic, Mahabharata which concludes with mass mayhem was the result of losing a gamble on the throw of dice. The villain, Duryodana abetted by his uncle, a shrewd exponent of the art of throwing a pair of dice, wins and the saintly loser gathers together his brothers and wife and heads for the woods.

This feckless king, Yudisthara finally wins back the kingdom in the great war but that is another story.

Going back to the tale of the God Shiva playing backgammon with His consort, Parvathi, we find this dalliance being depicted as sculptures in almost most of the ancient temples across India like the Kailasa temple at Ellora and at the Ramesvara cave also at Ellora, the lintel at Madhukeshava temple, Mukhalingam in Andhra Pradesh.

Incidentally a few lines from Chapter Four of the Skanda Purana is worth reproducing here:
‘ O God of Gods, your game is the whole Universe.’

and

‘The two dice are the paths of the Sun(ayane),
The two outcomes, victory and defeat
are called Creation and Dissolution,
when Devi wins there is Emanation
When Dhurjati ( Shiva) wins there is Reabsorbtion.’

and

While you two are engaged in playing,
Continued existence( of the Universe) is upheld.'

A post script is in order here. The neighbour in Malgudi-Mysore who never stepped out without throwing a handful of cowrie shells just to get a feel of the lay of the land, did so one day and after an extremely auspicious result, stepped out and walked smack bang into a temple bull ( or Nandi that is usually donated to the local temple and has a habit of butting people and vehicles out of its way) and was tossed into the nearby garbage heap with a couple of broken ribs. There is a message here somewhere!

What goes around comes around

2013-06-08T13:18:00.000+05:30

Or to use a better name, Sita-Lakshmi Aata. Down South in Tamil Nadu, this game which is also played across Karnataka, is known as Seethaipandi.

It is a game of solitaire mancala and is played by women. The game is supposed to have invented by the consort of Lord Rama, Sita, who after being abducted by the Dark King Ravana is expectantly waiting to be rescued by her Lord and to while away the hours invents this game.

The other more popular name for this mancala game is a variation called ‘Pallanguli’ and ‘Aluguli’ depending whether you are from Tamil Nadu or Karnataka.

The game board which in the recent past occupied a corner of the hall in almost all middle-class households across Southern India , is a long wooden and sometimes copper or brass. The board has 14 cups, seven on either side and each player controls seven cups.

Cowrie shells, coloured seeds, beads or tamarind seeds are used

.It is believed that there are three varieties of this game. There is ‘Kattattam,’ the six seeds game and the 12 seeds game.
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Long considered to be a woman’s game it is usually played as a part of the festive rituals on Shivarathri and Vaikunta Ekadasi days. ( Men too play but they become suspect while school boys who attempt to play with the girls usually get a sharp clip or two on their heads).

The game begins with six seeds placed in each cup. The player starting first picks up the seeds from any of her holes and, moving anti-clockwise, places one seed in each hole. If she reaches the end of her cups she goes on the other side of the board.

When the player drops her last seed, she takes the seeds from the next cup and continues placing them in this way. If the last seed falls into a cup with an empty cup following it, the seeds in the cup following the empty cup, are captured by the player.

That player then continues play from the next cup containing seeds. If the last seed falls into a cup with two empty holes beyond, she captures no seeds and her turn is over. The next player continues play in the same way.

Once the first round is over players take the seeds from their stores and fill as many of their holes as possible with six seeds each.The winner will have a surplus of seeds which are kept in her store. The loser of the first round will be unable to fill all of her holes. These unfilled holes are marked as "stores."

The game is over when a player is unable to fill any cups with six seeds at the end of a round.

Being an auspicious game, Sita-aaṭa is played in a clockwise sense, an auspicious direction. Sita is the epitome of virtue and Lakshmi is the goddess of wealth and renewal.

After giving away the seeds from pit to pit in an auspicious direction you end up with what you start and thus embodying the proverb: "What goes around comes around."

There is no competitiveness about this game and that in itself is a spiritual message. On the temporal side regular playing of this game makes one dexterous and nimble in hand and eye coordination.

In fact, this is one of the several traditional board games contests being held annually for school children in Tamil Nadu. Ramsons Kala Pratisthana (RKP) a registered trust located in Mysore, has also been in the forefront of nurturing these traditional board games by holding regular exhibitions since 2005.

Did the Gods play backgammon?

2013-06-06T14:10:00.002+05:30

Given the very western orientation of backgammon and its status as a cult game in the watering holes along the Riviera, thanks to a great extent to that Egyptian actor Omar Sharief, it is extraordinary but not surprising that this ancient game has been depicted in stone relief as being played by the God Shiva and His consort, Parvati.

One such depiction is to be seen in the main shrine vestibule of the Kailasa temple at Ellora and at the Ramesvara cave also at Ellora.

But this depictions of the gods shaking a pair of dice is also found in many other temples like the one on the lintel frieze at Madhukeshava temple, Mukhalingam in Andhra Pradesh.

Experts have asserted that the game being played by Shiva and Parvathi as depicted is an early form of backgammon.

The origins of backgammon lie buried in a hoary past, the 6th century or thereabouts and it happens to be in Persia where the game of backgammon was known as ‘Nard.’

But going back to an even earlier period, say the first millenium CE, the sculptures of usually Shiva and Parvathi show them playing a form of backgammon and it is this scene that is usually shown in the Ajanta and Jogeshwari caves of Maharastra and in the temple friezes of Orissa.

The noted scholar J N Banerjee in his 1956 book, ‘The Development of Hindu Iconography’( pp 464-499), makes reference to these sculptures which were previously known as Uma-Maheshwara, UmaShaktimurti or Alingana-Chandrashekaramurti but not much importance is given to the dice game being played.

D.Handelman and D Shulman in ‘God Inside Out: Shiva’s game of Dice’ (NY-OUP pp 66) quotes the Kashikhanda ( or Section 4) of Skanda Purana thus :

‘ O God of Gods, your game is the whole Universe.
The Houses on the Gaming Board, O Lord,
are the twelve months,
The dark and light pieces are the days of the moon,
Of which there are twice fifteen in a month;
The two dice are the paths of the Sun(ayane),
The two outcomes, victory and defeat
are called Creation and Dissolution,
when Devi wins there is Emanation
When Dhurjati ( Shiva) wins there is Reabsorbtion.
While you two are engaged in playing,
Continued existence( of the Universe) is upheld.
Thus the game itself is the entire Universe of the two Gods.
Devi is unable to defeat her husband.
Isha cannot defeat Shakti.
I have one more thing to say to Mother:
Although God is omniscient, he
understands nothing at all.
Since He remains very far removed from
both honour and disgrace.
His very being is play... ...’

When one travels to improve one's mind to the ancient temples of the Aihole, Badami, Hampi or Pattadkal in Karnataka, the monumental temple of Brihadeswara in Tanjore, the temple of the fish-eyed goddess, Madurai Meenakshi in Madurai and scores of other perhaps little known places, one gets to miss the small things that make all the difference.

One walks into the temple, marvelling at the huge pillared halls, past the friezes of damsels preening themselves, of riders on rampant horses , of murals on the high vaulted ceilings, and into the sanctum sanctorum and after the darshan of the Lord and His consort , makes his way back having missed on the small nuances embellished in the lintels or below the frieze etc.,

The gods and goddesses, the soldiers, the servitors are shown playing a game. One of them is in the process of throwing dice, one can make out that dice is not the usual cube but stick dice. There is a partial relief of a game board.

Eureka ! This is an ancient variation of backgammon! And it is no thanks to Omar Sharief , we knew all along that we played the game. Why even our Gods played the game!

in the rows

Iruthakadai halwa with Sokkattan

2013-06-06T13:57:00.003+05:30

Or the "Darkened shop' and a game of pachisi ! That's the literal translation of Irutha-kadai.

Then you can also call the game Dayakattam.

Sokkatan and Dayakattam are both Tamil names for Pachisi or Chaupar (Hindi), Chausar (also Hindi), Chopat (Hindi), Pagdi Pat (Marathi) and in the USA as Parchees.

But the universal language when one’s cloth Pachisi board was unfurled on the bench at the legendary ‘Iruthaakadai Halwa’ shop on the Amman Sannidhi Street near the banks of the Thamirabarani river in Tirunelvelli, was the language of the game !

The shop exists to this day and crowds gather from dawn to dusk for packets of the famed halwa!

Pachisi ( the word means 25 in Hindi) used to played for stakes and many of pictorial depictions of the game show usually royalty or nobility playing the game with bags of money by their side!

The cloth board with elaborate embroidery that runs along the four arms with playing squares which are known as ‘Houses’ has often been used mistakenly by temporary hippies on the Manali trail as patchwork add-ons on their singlet tops!

Each of the four players competes to send his counters down the centre of the arm from the middle, counterclockwise around the perimeter and back to the starting point. Skill is needed to thwart and block the enemy and ‘killing’ opposing pieces during the race.

But if you think that is a rare dying game, you are likely to be wrong.

Pachisi like other board games is alive well and is a living tradition across villages and small towns across the country.

But there is renewed hope for this heirloom tradition. The Mysore-based Trust, Ramsons Kala Pratishtana(RKP) set up in 1995 has infused new life into this tradition.

The trust encourages craftspersons across the country to make a variety of traditional game boards which are then sold at the RKP outlet in Mysore or at the annual game boards exhibition called, ‘ Kreeda Kaushalya.’

Moving from Tirunelvelli one could take one of the State transport buses to Tiruvanamalai the home of the Silent Sage of Arunachala, Ramana Maharishi to whose ashram come a couple of thousand of spiritual seekers from across the globe every year during the winter months.

The huge hill symbolising the Agni form of Shiva stands aloof with the ashram behind it.

The Sage Ramana Maharishi lived in a cave near the top of the hill at what is today known as Skanda Ashram.

There are steps hewn out of rock that one climbs and it is one on of the steps along the path that Swami Dev Ananda has painstakingly etched out a game of Tigers and goats game pattern for the pilgrim to sit a while and play a game or two before climbing the steps to reach the top!

Dev Ananda is not a real Swami. He is Dutch, wears an ochre dhoti and is bare-bodied. he lives in one of the ruins dotted around the hill and is mouni ( that is keeps his mouth shut ) and he got the name since he saw that hideous blasphemy of a movie made from R K Narayan's Book The Guide...

Dev Ananda has this habit of etching out traditional games n rocks all along the route to either the top of the hill or along the inner path that pilgrims take when they go around the hill.

The reason why the Dutch sanyasin was mentioned is to say that in many parts of Tamil Nadu particularly in the ancient temple towns like Kanchipuram, Madurai, or Tiruvanamalai one will find old traditional games inscribed on the stone floors of the temples.

One can sit on the cool granite floor in the grand hall of some 500 year old temple and soon attract a small crowd of gamesters the moment you unfold a cloth Pachisi board. It's as though a band of old friends have gathered after a long hiatus and begun the game where they left years ago!

May be we will get to meet once again on the steps that lead to Skanda Ashram and play a game on the steps!

.

Momos, Aluguli or idlis! You can do all three!

2013-06-06T13:33:00.000+05:30

If you are ever in Central London, give those desperate calls of various kith and kin from Birmingham a wide berth and make a beeline to the Dickensian part of London... Petticoat Lane or Portobello Road!

Beats going all the way to Swindon, Notting Hill or Birmingham merely to speak a patois Punjabi, Konkani or Tamil and eat chicken or goat curry or buy garam masala powder.

What you ought to do is do what we did. Being a Saturday, we walked down to the nearest Tube station stop ( underground railway) at 9am and boarded the train at Sheperd’s Bush and some 20 minutes later got off at Notting-Hill Gate which is close to Holland Park.

A leisurely stroll and the sounds and sights of Portobello Road hove into view a few minutes later. Portobello Road is an iconic flea market, where you can pick up a painting, old clothes, kitchen utensils, buy vegetables, eat fish and chip wrapped still the Times and of course cow creamers and other antiques!

The place swarms with tourists from the counties and it is very rarely you hear or see another India here!
The local stall owners look as though they have stepped off the wings of ‘My fair Lady’ or an aging rocker taking a break from playing bass at one of the pubs or walked out of the pages of a Harry Potter Book!

We are here to meet Giles, gay as gay can be and an old India hand.

No, he did not have mutton-chop whiskered ancestors who had done their time in Skinner’s Horse or Hodson’s Horse.

Giles has spent the last 16 years in India traveling across Varanasi, Jaipur, Goa and Bangalore, collecting a book here, a painting there and various artefacts from the lanes behind Russel Market in Bangalore.

Being an idli fan who loves to drink bowls of sambhar, Giles had, we were told, picked up some ancient idli steamers from a Tibetan restaurant in Bylukuppe in Karnataka, which is the largest Tibetan settlement with some some 30,000 Tibetans all grinning like Cheshire Cats!
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Giles was easy to spot. His stall was two large push carts and was loaded with ‘antique stuff’, Giles himself with flowing locks and several fake rudrashka bead necklaces around his neck looking like a dissipated Rolling Stone, hailed us.

Couple of bottles of the finest Guinness appeared from nowhere and we were looking at the 100 year old idle steamer. “Picked it off a Tibetan who used to make momos with it’ said Giles.

“ Claimed he could get 14 small momos and two large ones.”

“ I tried to make idlis but it didn’t turn out well.”

“That’s because what you have, dear Giles, is an fairly oldish traditional Indian board game, the Aluguli mane.”

This one was about three feet long and weighed about a ton. Pitted and scarred from being kept on the fire in its earlier avatar as cooking utensil, the Aluguli Mane was a remarkable game board specimen of one of the oldest games that was played and continues to be played across India.

Picking a handful of coloured beads from a gypsy Banjara necklace, placing Aluguli board on a stool, we treated Giles and other assorted gawkers to a game of Aluguli.

Two of the aging hippies who had done their tour of duty of the ashrams in the Himalayas quickly figured it out and sat down to a game. Guinness flowed like water and crowds swelled around Giles' stall!

Giles of course was over the hill in rapture. He sold four of the huge copper Aluguli mane boards and one of the satisfied customers was heard remarking, “ Honey, we can steam momos in the evenings and get down to a game later .”

Priceless!

Games of the Superior Mind

2013-06-06T13:20:00.001+05:30

The original Japanese is a bit of a tongue-twister and the translation ‘Game of the Superior Mind’ certainly sounds much better and gives a touch of the hoity-toity to a game, several games that come under this category.

A brief digression is in order here. A recent report says that those undergoing chemotherapy respond much better if they spend more time with computer games.

Studies have been done by boffins across the US and UK and the researchers unanimously have urged patients to take up computer gaming if they want to get back to normalcy.

Keep that in mind since we are going to come back to that later.

Take a look at the world stats for people employed in the world of high finance or technology. A good 80 % of them nerds and geeks come from Asia. That is India, China and Japan. And in all these countries, ‘Games of the Superior Mind,’ like chess and Chaturang( war games), Weiqui ( Strategy), Go ( Siege and positioning), Xiangqui ( and this sounds better -‘ The Earthworms tame the Dragon!’) are played in every street corners ( China and Japan) and many homes ( India, China and Japan).

But there is more here than people hunkering down and getting set. For in all the games that we have mentioned there is an air of superior sophistication. You as a player are expected to take on the persona of say, a Shogun, a Samurai, an Indian noble or Taoist monk.

Then again the very confession that one plays Chess or Chaturanga is enough to raise you in the eyes of others.

One game of Zen-like sophistication is Go. If you have seen ‘ A Beautiful Mind’ with Russell Crowe as the Nobel Laureate John Nash, then you will get a glimmering of an idea.

If you in addition have read ‘Master of Go’ by Yasunari Kawabata or the slightly pop-psychological thriller, ‘ Shibumi’ by Trevanian, or even Tale of the Genji then you will see that game of Go has all the elements of Zen and the Art of Archery and Kendo incorporated in it. There is even a culmination where you get to do the right thing, commit hara-kiri or sepuku if warranted.

Since Chess is a war game given the proven fact that the placing of the pawns and other pieces is akin to the placing of the army on the battlefield we take a brief look at Go which is a siege game.

The Zen-life quality of Go is described by Yasunari Kawabata in his classic, ‘The Master of Go’ : “ The white pieces reflected on the mirror-like face of the board, become one with the figure of the Master; and the violence of the wind and the rain in the garden seemed to intensify the stillness of the room.”

The Go board has a grid of 19 horizontal and 19 vertical lines. The two players alternately place black and white stones ( that is one of the players obviously pick either black or white and the opponent what is left) on the intersection of the lines. ( There are several Indian traditional games that are also similar !)

The goal of the players is to expand their territory even as they try to surround their opponent by confining the opponent’s stones on all four sides, effectively hamstringing him.

Simple? Not really. The players needs to be highly skilled, their IQ reaching MENSA levels since there is a lot of chess-like moves being charted in the mind. The player even as he attempts to surround the opponent’s stones in one area of the board should constantly survey and examining the entire progress of the game.

Go Masters refer to this ability has ‘Taikyoku-kan ( viewing the entire game in totality) and of course it is the mastery of Taikyoku-kan that will help the players decide on the outcome of the game.

What one is talking about is the oft-heard comments in great chess tournaments ,’ He had already lost in the five move,’ Like in chess, a partial victory that the swiping off the boards of a few pawns and ultimately get the player checkmated or wiped clean of the board.

‘The Earthworms tame the Dragon’ or Xiangui is the Chinese game of cold-blooded mayhem done in an aesthetic manner. Xiangui is a game of displacement. The object here is to capture or eliminate the opponent’s pieces, culminating in the capture of the opposing General.

Like chess? Yes. Even the movement of the pieces in Go is a lot similar to chess. The chariot (Ju) in Go moves like the rook in chess, the horse (Ma) moves in an L-shaped pattern like the knight and the elephant (Xiang) diagonally like the bishop and so on.

The even earlier game of Chaturanga and its global chess version are also well known among game board followers.

The origins of Chaturanga are hidden in the murky depths of ancient history. There are evidences that Chaturanga was already in use as a past-time even as early as 600CE which was a period when travel along the Silk Road that connected China with India, Persia and Western Asia was at its height.

This is where the connection between Chaturanga and Xiangui comes alive. But when Chaturanga pieces are intricately carved the pieces used in Xiangui are flat shiny discs and are distinguished by the inscription of their names in Chinese characters or images.

Whatever they may be in terms of size, and structure, the fact remains that these ‘superior games of the mind’ did have an effect on man. Whether he continued to be remain a backward Neanderthal or a fairly intelligent Homo Sapien depended on his skill with games such as these!

Indeed according to some socio-anthropologists, regular playing of games of the Superior Mind, helped a child develop not only social skills but also a logical and analytical mind.

Perhaps the school education system in India ought to take a leaf from the efforts being made by a Mysore-based NGO, Ramsons Kala Pratishtana which has been in the forefront of nurturing the traditional arts of the country including traditional games since 2005 by holding yearly exhibitions of board games, Kreeda Kaushalya or the the festival of dolls called Bombe Mane every year.

The Gamesters etiquette

2013-06-04T13:46:00.001+05:30

First of all, one has not been a frequenter of the Riviera or the gaming tables of Monaco or even Vegas.

The closest one has of experiencing gambling has been in one of the several offshore floating casinos that dot the mouth of the River Mandovi in Panaji, Goa

But the fact that one was behind the bar and could only see the action was enough to get an idea. Besides having seen several Hollywood movies that showed huge cavernous, high vaulted halls lit by chandeliers, lots of slinky women and men in tuxedos playing roulette or poker, one felt that one was entitled to form an opinion of the etiquette that was part of the gambling scene.

In the Hollywood movies the men are all dressed in Burberry or Huntsman of Savile Row, with diamonds rings on all fingers.The men hold brandy snifters while the women smoke horribly smelling Russian cigarettes in holders so long as though they have been told to stay away from tobacco!

Gambling halls should not be understood to be something described by Bertie Wooster after an evening at the Drones or of the old Explorers Club on the Pall Mall. This is serious affair.

Everything has to be done within the Unwritten Code. Even sticking the stiletto between the ribs of an unsuspecting member who won three times in a row. Everything has to be done with a touch of class.

Even in India which as all experts agree is the home of many of the board games played across the globe, had its own unique etiquette and dress code that varied from region to region. There was and is a certain formality to be followed when playing the game of Pagade, Pachisi, Chess or even going through that ancient tome, Kreeda Kaushalyam!
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If you have seen those old Hindi movies that showed men and women dress in period costumes dating to the Mughal era or somewhere thereabouts, there would invariably be a scene where the men hunkered down to game of Pachisi or Chess.

The cronies of each player would form the on either side while the women in heavy, flowing, sequined skirts and rows of bangles and bit of jewelry stuck in their hair, ears, nose would be seated at the far end quoting couplets from the oeuvre of Mir or one of the earlier Urdu poets.

In deep south in many of the temple towns the men would be dressed in dhoties and the upper bodies would be bare except for the sacred thread while the women would be dressed in the traditional nine yard sari

But the Code was here as well. One did not wager one’s wife or house since we all know what happened to a certain band of brothers who did that and hope they had to wander the forests for 14 years and all that!

Things get a little violent in South Asia where board game players gather to play.

If you have been a regular at all those Chinese Kung Fu flicks being shown in China Town just off Part Street in good old Calcutta in the 70s, then you will realize that in those chop suey tea houses where the Chinese version of Pachisi is being played, the good guys and bad guys have clearly etched codes of conduct.

The bad guys always wins and are always expected to make a couple of cracks about Shaolin while the good guy is the sore loser and sits scowling till one of the bad guys’ heavies pulls out the chop sticks from the rice soup and attempted to skewer the hero through the back of his neck. This is followed by synchronized fight scenes till the chop suey joint is in shambles. This is code of the board game players in China thanks to the movies of the Hong Kong Shaw Brothers.

There are no tramp steamers from Goa to Thailand but there is a cheap flight via Colombo that takes the avid gamesters straight to the gambling dens of Pattaya in Thailand.

The games are variations of many of the Indian board games like dominos or backgammon and wagers are usually made in Thai bahts.

But even here there is a code. The men whether from the vicinity or tourists just off the steam boat, dress in singlets and shorts while the women are in bikinis veiled by sarongs or nothing more than a clutch purse held strategically.

Be that as it may. The fact of the matter is that there is strict gamesters etiquette across the world’s gaming halls.
If you think it is all a question of sitting on the floor and calling your brainless brother-in-law for a game of Pagade,you would be sadly mistaken.

You have to play the game like that old India hands would say.

Whether you like it or not, you must adhere to etiquette particularly if that Bro-in-law is winning and is seven games ahead of you, you cannot bop him on the head with the brass aluguli board and hope for a plea of temporary insanity to get you off.

You have to pay the price!

The Boffins have missed a point or two! We knew all along!

2013-06-04T13:33:00.004+05:30

The recent report that regular playing of online games helps retard the onset of Parkinsons’ disease had the local quacks getting all into a tizzy.

Something our ancient seers and savants knew all along and thus recommended the playing of board games by those given to the shakes, the jitters and the ability to see Cheshire cats perched on tree limbs. Regular playing of board games would help control the jitters and that pesky Cheshire cat would vanish just as it does in those Alice books.

Why do you think there are game board etched in the hard thousand year old flagstones of the equally ancient temple floors?

The idea being that the those afflicted could sit outside in the corridors and get done to some hard dice throwing while the rest of the family earnestly sought favors of the Gods and Goddesses to send down a cure, just in case.

But then there is something about sitting down on the old pyol or the floor and spread the Pachisi board, bring out the counters and the dice, rope in a couple of loony family members and get a game going, that just does not seem to get the attention of the younger set particularly those dressed in ersatz Purdue-U tee shirts and cargo shorts! They prefer game console and all the background noise.

Be that as it may. Doctors in the West have claimed that playing computer or online games helps in increasing hand and eye coordination as well as getting the grey cells to work overtime thus keeping the mid sharp and agile. But the lure of computer and online games is that most often than not, you do not need a partner. You can play by yourself! Oops, did not see that one coming!

This is where the great difference lies between online games and traditional board games of India. There is the history for one. They are ancient, so to speak. And they are like a latter 'Kung-Fu games become philosophy' kind of thing. You know the sort of thing that one once saw in the old Shaw and Shaw Brothers Hong Kong movies that featured Bruce Lee spouting some vague Shaolin philosophy while kicking the bad guys!

Traditional board games of India in particular are as diverse as the people. They range from the famed hunt games, war games, race games, games of strategy and alignment to the myriad variations of simple yet mind-bending games that are played to this day in temple corridors the halls of houses or the original hippies( the native Indian kind) who gather under the village tree to roll a beedi and play a game of tigers and goats?

These games were and are still being played by a vast majority of the six billion population of India. Six Billion? Or thereabout! And we have fewer loony bins and fewer loonies than the USA. And Parkinsons ? That is a word that been cropping up in the Indian vocabulary only the recent past.

All this merely proves that our ancient savants knew a thing or two when they encouraged the playing of board games. In fact it is one of the 64 arts that Sage Vatsayana considered imperative for a young coupe to be familiar with when he wrote the Kama Sutra. The venerable Sage expected one to play the game with a certain amount of the skill. Yes, the Kama Sutra is not about tying yourself into an intricate knot with your partner and attaining Nirvana of another kind, it is all about about being a cultured gentleman or woman !

While it is all very well to have an ornate game board in the living room or in the padded room where one’s close kith and kin are being shackled, it would be even nicer if there could be an Online Pachisi or Tiger and Goats game or any of the hundreds of traditional games. The added attraction could be background music or noise if you so prefer.

The point is when interactive online games can be designed, why not do the same with a game like Pachisi or Alaguli. If there can be online Sudoku and chess , then why not Pagade? Why not Goats and Tigers or , or… even a Zen-like Japanese game like Go … the list becomes endless!

Why on earth does one have to pretend to be GI Joe, or the one of the Super Mario Brothers, or even the Lara Croft why not just be a player playing a game. But if sounds and characters are necessary to give that real feel to the game then, why not have the two characters Mir and Mirza from Satyajit Ray’s Shatranj ke Khilari created. One could squeak like Saeed Jaffrey and the other drawl like the inimitable like Sanjeev Kapoor.

This is an idea worth pursuing. The entire cast of the great movie could be created while the game itself revolved around the chess players. Dialogues could be added on with a couple of quotes from some great Urdu poet or two! In fact the players could get the options of choosing the poet of their choice, say Mir Taki Mir, Mirza Ghalib and so on.

The possibilities are endless and it is a wonder why no one has ever thought of cashing in on this scheme. Lots of money to be made out there … online Pachisi , Pagade, you name it and you have got it!!! Besides one could save on brain doctors’ bills!

The Game of the Great Sepoy Mutiny

2013-05-22T12:40:00.000+05:30

Not in the same league as the Great Game of Kipling’s ‘Kim’ but neither has this any reference to that other Great Sepoy Mutiny of 1857.

That 1857 Sepoy Mutiny came a nasty cropper but this Sepoy Mutiny lets you live to fight another day!

This is a war game in the best of military traditions.

War Games of skill and strategy are not just limited to the old fashioned verandahs or Pyols if you prefer that term, or the nearest village meeting place under the tree or even the temple courtyard, but played in war rooms of the world’s great military colleges like Sandhurst, West Point and the Indian Military Academy. Two armies face off and strategies worked out with ‘kills’ being registered and so on and so forth. Finally one side wins and the other officer- in -the- making gets to do KP for a week!

But in the Sepoy Mutiny Game, two players face off with 23 counters or soldiers or sepoys each. The board itself is a complex diagram as shown in the picture given below (Fig.1). The dots are the intersections on which the counters or sepoys are placed.

The winners is the one ‘kills’ all the enemy sepoys.

You mean, where is the mutiny? Well that is simple. You are heading the loyal forces of the King and your opponent heads the mutinous gang of cut throats that ever lived, right?

Check out figure 2, and that is how the sepoys will be placed. You can see that two armies of 23 yellow sepoys and 23 red sepoys are in a formation on the board in Fig.2.

The sepoys can be moved in any direction but just one pace at a time and only along connected points (see Fig.3). If a point is not connected then the sepoy cannot make a move there (see Fig.4).

This is how a kill is made: If a sepoy encounters another from the other side and sees that there is an open point behind him, then all it needs is a quick leap over the hapless mutineer and thus ‘kill’ him out of the game (see Fig.5). A spry sepoy can jump over many mutineers if the placing is opportune and thus if the conditions are favourable or so contrived can decimate half the mutinous crew (see Fig.6).

Consumed by bloodlust then it possible for the victorious sepoys to further finish off all the mutineers. But before that one must know the proper way of 'killing'. A sepoy cannot jump if there is no point behind the enemy (see Fig.7). A sepoy cannot also jump if the point behind the enemy is already occupied (see Fig.8).

The Sepoy Mutiny is an ancient game and some of the ancient carvings on the flagstones of the equally old temples of southern India and even Sri Lanka depict this game and are not cryptic alien signs by the denizens of a visiting UFO!

In fact there is an etched pattern of this game in the temple premises of Huchchapparaya, Sri Venugopalaswamy of Hemmaragala, Nanjangud Taluk.

The next time you go walkabout on your yearly sabbatical, and visit the temple towns down south look for these carving on the temple courtyard stones. You will be surprised at what you see! Hunker down to a game and you will soon draw a crowd of interested and active participants.

Of course, regular playing of this game may even give you Brownie points when you want to join one of the great military academies!

Where there is a will...

2013-05-17T12:43:00.000+05:30

... there is a lawsuit!

It happened one summer night some 40 years ago when a game of Pachisi was in play. The half-fun wager literally ‘unto half my kingdom’ was taken seriously and the end result was that this property dispute case is still going on in the apex court of India!

The will to win was there but the dice refused to kowtow.

The point is that kingdoms have been lost and won on the throw of a pair of dice. There are epics that refer to this matter. The matter has been etched in stone slabs paved in temples, over the main gateways of sanctums, warning the unwary that it is not just cricket to wager with one’s spouse, house and assorted kin as stake.

That brother of the wife who is forever mooching around the dining room for scraps, is alright to be staked but one will discover that there will be no takers for such a bet. No one wants a human vacuum machine around the fridge!

The point being made here is that shaking a pair of dice is as old as civilization itself.

Ever since early man on discovering that he could exercise his vocal cords and not make any grunts and ooghs like the apes in one of the Tarzan books, suggested to rest of the cave dwellers that when they could take a break from hunting the sabre tooth tiger they could hunker down by the fire and play a game of Sabre tooths and Bisons.

Evolution did the decent thing and we now have the game of Tigers and Goats! And it was here according to cave wall scribblings that, the very first court case began with the crooked victor grilled over an open fire!

The dicey-ness of dice has been figured by seers of yore.

There is even a group of verses in the Rg Veda called 'Aksha Sukta' or ‘The Gamester’s Lament’ which we reproduce for you, loosely translated, of course :

“ The dangling nuts, born where the wind blows the lofty tree,
delight me with their rolling on the board.
The cheering vibhidaka has brought me joy,
like a draught of soma from Mount Mujavant.”

But after this euphoric draught of the intoxicating Soma, the gambler bemoans the loss of his wife and wealth through his addiction. (Check out A.L. Basham’s ‘The Wonder that was India’ , pp 403-405; and Wendy Doniger O’ Flaherty’s The Rg Veda, pp.239-42 )

The Skanda Purana also refers to a game of dice (or is it an early version of Backgammon?) played by the God Shiva and his consort, Parvathi, but there is no mention of the stakes being won and lost.

The feckless Yudhishtira’s losing his kingdom, and his wife being saved in the nick of time by the Lord Krishna and his various travails along with his brothers and of the King Nala who loses his kingdom and is out in the cold with his devoted wife Damayanti, have been recounted enough number of times in books, films and TV serials but there you have it, the lure of the dice is as strong as ever and people to this day gamble all that they have on the throw of a couple of cubes of ivory.

Today's wives would have filed a law suit against such husbands! And what is more, cleaned him of every thing except perhaps the shirt on his back.

Which is why savants of the old thought of this: Where there is a Will, there is not a Way but a lawsuit.

Board Games in Lawley Extension!

2013-05-17T12:37:00.000+05:30

Lawley Extension?

Just another name for Laxmipuram in Mysore where the late novelist R K Narayan lived and wrote some of his most memorable novels.

For those who have been brought up on a diet of early R K Narayan, Lawley Extension is an intrinsic part of Malgudi which many learned scholars and writers have claimed to be any little town in Tamil Nadu. This is blasphemy and calls for the heated iron and red hot coal treatment.

Narayan (who is even better than Chekov or de Maupassant anyday) wrote of life in Mysore as he saw and the people he met when he went for his stroll from his Laxmipuram residence (the sprawling house still stands there) to the heart of the city. He was briefly a correspondent for a Madras daily which he soon gave up to become a full time writer.

But it was the game of pagade that was played on the pyol (large verandah) of his house during the month long summer holidays that one recollects.

RKN wrote in long hand and then typed it out on an old machine. His favourite place was in one of the airy rooms while his mother and other family members and extended family members plus the younger ones sat on the verandah, chatted or like us played Pagade or Alu-Guli.

In fact, if one were to walk into any of the houses either in Laxmipuram or Krishnamurthypuram, on a summer evening, chances are that a game of Pagade would be in progress. Or it could be Alu-Guli or Chauka Bara.

There was no house that did not have a Pagade board or a huge massive carved Alu-Guli board placed in a corner of the hall, ready to be brought into play. Some of the houses had ornate brass (or was it copper? ) Alu-Guli boards.

Pagade or Pachisi is a race game that was and is played in every nook and corner of the country.
Pachisi ( the word means 25 in Hindi) used to played for stakes and many of pictorial depictions of the game show usually royalty or nobility playing the game with bags of money by their side!

The Pagade board is four-armed with playing squares which are known as ‘Houses’ embroidered on a piece of square cloth. The stick dice too may have distinct pattern of dots that only those who knew the game understood what they meant!

The Pagade cloth board comes with four sets of counters (each set has four) coloured red, black, yellow and green and a pair of stick dice. Each of the players in his or her turn endeavors to send his counters racing across all four arms, counterclockwise right round the perimeter and then back to the starting point. The first one to get all his counters into the central square is the winner.

In the small narrow conservancy lane in Laxmipuram which became Kabir Lane in Malgudi, which in the early 50s, boasted a neat row of houses with small yards in front with the ubiquitous Tulasi Katte in the centre and there would be small bushes of Sampige or Jasmine and sometimes rose. There would be a small narrow verandah on which the man of the house relaxed after coming from work with the daily evening Kannada paper while the wife and other ladies would be preparing to go to the temple.

The youngsters after an argumentative game of tennis ball cricket would sit on the verandah to play Tigers and goats (Aadu-Huli Aata) or Snakes and Ladders or Ludo or Aluguli which was seen as a game for the girls. No boy would want to be seen playing Aluguli with his sisters. His life at school would be permanently ruined!

TV? The word was meaningless. Even radio sets were far and few. National, Ecko for the hoi polloi and Bush, Phillips for the wealthier. Newspapers were bought by every house and widely read by family and friends! Transistor radios were yet to be seen.

The result was that countless families and one is sure, across the country too, depended on simple, wholesome board games for entertainment and of course the daily newspaper.

Even under the shadow of the Dodda Gadiyara ( Big Clock Tower) next to the Rangacharlu Memorial Hall (the Town Hall to the uninitiated), near Curzon Park, loungers would be seated playing a game of Tigers and Goats drawn on the stone with bits of broken bricks.

The character, Raju, of R K Narayan’s Guide was a regular at these impromptu games. No, he, Raju, was not a figment of Narayan’s imagination but a pesky tourist guide who had a business tie-up with a tonga driver and between them they would hustle tourists from one place to another. Yes, Raju was as real as the Man-Eater of Malgudi or The Financial Expert, Margayya or Mr Sampath!

This was Malgudi. This was Mysore of the 40s and 50s. Those lucky enough to have lived in Lawley Extension (Laxmipuram)and elsewhere in this city, knew the pleasures of a simple game of Chauka Bara or Pagade that bound friends for life.

Like meeting an old friend after 50 years and discovering all that was evergreen in his memory was seeing yours truly playing Alu-guli with the girls! Priceless!

May the Force be with you !

2013-05-15T13:23:00.000+05:30

You will need it when playing Gyan Chaupar or ‘Game of Knowledge.’

You haven’t got my drift? Then I will continue snowing!

Gyan Chaupar is a souped up ‘Snakes and Ladders’ with a mystic twist to it. Much like the 'Star Wars' trilogy with its homespun spirituality spouted by highly evolved gremlins like Obi-Wan-Kenobi, the Jedi Knight whose confusing sayings are often mistaken for wisdom.

But Snakes and Ladders in its Gyan Chaupar form is highly sophisticated spirituality.

The dice are thrown in the game and the progress of the players plotted from various states of temporary enlightenment to states of illusion, vices, and finally to the state of enlightenment or oneness with God.
Heavy going, right?

Right up the main street of Mcleodganj with smoke from many hookahs clouding the brain.

Be that as it may.
The late 10th Century work, ‘Rishabhapanchashika’ attributed to Dhanapala and loosely translated means: “Like gamesmen, the living beings on the gaming board of Samsara (the cycle of rebirths) are carried away by the dice (or senses), but when they see you, O Jina, the place of refuge (or square on a game board), they become free from possession by prison, slaughter and death.”

This is what set Gyan Chaupar apart from the plain old Snakes and Ladders. This is what separated the men from the boys when they played the game on Mahashivratri or the Amavvasya night that famous festival of lights, Diwali.

One kept awake on these nights and one way to stay awake was to play any one of the several board games, though the hardier settled down for a round or maybe several rounds of cards.

Just imagine a young Hans Solo and future Darth Vader (Anakin Skywalker yet to get his funky headgear and breathe heavily like an ex-racehorse) play the game of Gyan Chaupar and the game will not be out of place at all.

There would be other denizens, like Jabba the Hutt or one of the Ewoks on the sidelines egging on the players as they stumbled, rose, fell and rose again in a bid to attain enlightenment.

Gyan Chaupar is also the theory of Karma illumined through a traditional game of snakes and ladders.
The Hindu Gyan Chaupar is not very different from the Jain Gyan Chaupar boards, it is just doctrinal differences. In the Hindu Gyan Chaupar boards games extensive use is made of Sankhya, Yoga, Vedanta or Tantric philosophy.

The Sufi game of Gyan Chaupar incorporates some of the canons of Islam and Sufi mystical paths to take the seeker closer to God.

In the works of Amir Khusru and other Sufi saints the game is known as ‘Shatranj-al-arifin’ or ‘ Chess of the Gnostics,’ and a regular playing of the game is expected to lead one from the enticements of the world and the devil (think of Nicholas Cage in 'Ghost Rider’ and of course Faustus) to union with the Almighty.

Hard to believe? Then this ought to make you think a bit.

The Maharashtrian saint, Jnaneswar, used the Gyan Chaupar game known as Mokshapata (the Board of Enlightenment), to bring “relief to such people who have been afflicted by Samsara.”

Gyan Chaupar with its elaborate calligraphy and art was once upon a time an essential part of the Woodstock Hippie’s backpack. He or she would sell his jeans (most of them did so at the Anjuna flea market) but never his Gyan Chaupar board. Hey, we are heading towards enlightenment !

May the Force be with you!

Confessions are good for the soul ...

2013-05-15T12:31:00.002+05:30

...but not for the reputation and certainly not when you are playing ‘Tigers and Goats’

The confession that you haven’t the foggiest idea of how to play backgammon or that ancient hunt game of Tigers and Goats ( or Aadu Huli Aata as it is known in the Kannada language of the Indian State of Karnataka ) can lead to one acquiring a reputation of being not quite there! Chauncey Gardener could get away with it in 'Being There,' but you can't!

It was Thomas Robert Dewar whose name has been immortalised by one of the finest blended Scotch whiskies, who said: “Confessions are good for the soul but not for the reputation.”

When you are playing this simple game of Aadu Huli Aata (‘Goats and Tigers’ or even ‘Cows and Leopards,’ if that is your preference ) you will discover that if you are the tiger it is not just a question of swallowing the minimum of six plus one goats but being nifty in dodging the slow ganging up of goats who are hell bent on pinning you into a corner where all you can do is roar in impotent rage!
.
This is one game that is not just played by two players but there is active participation of aunts, uncles, fathers and fathers-in-law, mothers and mothers-in-law, of daughters, sons, particularly those below 13 and other assorted kith and kin who crawl out of the woodwork when the word gets around that a game of Aadu-Huli Aata is about to commence. In fact permanent blood feuds have resulted from playing this game by the unwary.

Whether you are the goatherd or the owner of the tigers, you will be subjected to unwarranted , unsolicited advice which in most cases proves deliberately useless.

The game which in the old days, pre-Woodstock days, was usually scribbled with chalk on the floor of the verandah and everybody sprawled around. And if you were a hippie in India then you used a broken piece of charcoal or brick and drew the game on the floor of the shack or some ruin and called the local natives to join in the fun.

Go back further in time and you will discover that in many of the ancient temples, there will be this game etched by some sculptor goofing off and rounding up a couple of other members to play a game.

You don’t believe me ?

The next time you walk up the steps of the Chamundi Hill in Mysore, stop by the first archway and on the stone platforms you will discover this game etched deep in the rock.

Not only this temple, the even more old temples of Aihole, Pattadakal, Badami, Hampi, Madurai etc., you are likely to see this game and many others inscribed on the stone slabs, flagstones, etc.

This is how the game goes: The powerful tigers or leopards ‘kill’ the weaker goats or cows by jumping over them in a straight line and onto a vacant point just beyond. The weaker sheep or goats do not have this advantage of leaping over but instead they ‘gang up’ and trap the powerful tigers into a state of immobility.

This is where your reputation is on the line. All your boasting that you have played this game many a times while you were still in your shorty pants will come a cropper if (and it doesn't matter if you are a goat or a leopard or a tiger) you get skewered or pinned as the case may be.

It is not a question of moving the pieces randomly hoping for the best. The game calls for devious thinking like a home-grown Ninja and outsmarting your opponent. Or a martial artist. Or a chess player!

Whether you draw the tigers or the goats, either way, you have to mentally plan your strategy and there are several ’what if’ questions that you need to work out mentally.

But if you are not able to count up to 20 without using your fingers and toes, then this game is not for you!

Traditional Board Games contests - a little like WWE !

2013-05-14T13:58:00.004+05:30

Traditional board games when played by family members on a late Sunday morning or by friends who have gathered around the embroidered square cloth often degenerate into the kind of fracas that is normally associated with World Wrestling Entertainment ( one prefers the earlier name, World Wrestling Federation which has a lot of gravitas to it)....Like sound and fury with nary a blow being given or taken.

Like John Cena and Triple XXX or The Rock, the players square off on either side of a pachisi board. The counters and the dice are placed. A coin is tossed to decided who is going to throw the dice first.

That’s when the trouble starts.

The various family members who have divided themselves into two camps now start baying for blood.

One of the players now calls ‘foul’ and claims that the coin was tossed in such a way that it would come up heads. The coin is now examined for crookedness! Everything is above board.

Now the players begin to brag with one consistently needling the other. The other assumes the kind of hurt look like The Rock assumes just when he is about to go ballistic.

The play begins with the throwing of dice. Another verbal fracas now beings.

The warring camps now demand that the dice be checked. “How do I know if the dice are not loaded?” asks one who has spent a dozen years in New York and has seen ‘The Godfather’ a hundred times... he even speaks from the corner of his mouth.... “With what” replies another defiantly who does not have the foggiest idea since he has not traveled beyond Mysore and has confessed to not having seen ‘The Godfather.’

Thus the game proceeds in fits and starts, with advice freely given to the players apart from insults of the funnier kind.

Another bout of verbal jousting ensues with bystanders egging on the contestants.

The game is yet to get underway and the counters yet to start moving.

At last, a couple of hours later, the game gets underway and another hour later , there is one winner and one sore loser.

The winner pumps his hand in the air while the loser gives out a mock roar that has the eerie resemblance to a Neanderthal man crying out his pain as the wooly mammoth makes its escape with a spear hanging from its rear!

Losers in board game do not go gently into the night ( Apologies to Dylan Thomas). There is a little pomp as he or she primps, looks as though he has been stabbed in the back when the referee was not looking even though the bystanders do.

In fact you can see a touch of Hamlet and Lear in the loser’s bearing while the victor smirks and preens just like the winner in a WWE tournament !

The Kreedaa Kaushalya Mela of traditional board games will not be WWE but an awesome smorgasbord of board games on display and for sale organised by Ramsons Kala Pratishtana (RKP) in Mysore.

Kreedaa Kaushalya which began on May 10th will go on till May 26th at the RKP’s Pratima Gallery located above Aamarapalli on the Nazarbad main road.

This celebration of board games of India is just one of the many initiatives of RKP to revitalise the handicrafts industry of the country and provide a fillip to crafts persons across the country. You could look up the website of Ramsons for more details.

Master of Board Games

2013-05-14T13:51:00.004+05:30

'Master of Board Games ' - This title goes to Mummadi Krishnaraja Wadiyar III. And it was accorded by the learned masters of board games, both scholars and amateurs at several International Board Games meets!

A brief note about this king will not be out of place.

Mummadi ascended the throne when he was still a boy of five in uncertain times. It was a tumultuous period in history. Tipu Sultan had been defeated and the English on the urgings of the young king’s mother and later his guardian as regent, Rajamata Lakshmammanni, crowned him the ruler of Mysore. The period 1811 to 1868 saw the beginning of a new era for the kingdom of Mysore. But not it seems for the king, who according to historians, was a soft-hearted and kind man.

It is believed by some scholars that it was only after Mummadi Krishnaraja Wadiyar ‘gave ‘ up the throne in 1831 that he had the time and the inclination to patronise the arts and indulge in his passion for board games and mathematical puzzles.

Such was his vast grasp of various board games that he not only devised several new variations of some of the classic games but wrote voluminous commentaries on games, commissioned court painters to paint murals of board games so that the whole world would come to know more about them.

Written manuscripts, murals, inscribed copper plates, game boards, dice and counters and inscribed copper coins form the vast corpus of work of Mummadi Krishnaraja Wadiyar on board games.

Among his many writings, mention may be made of : Chaduranga Sarasarvasvam, SriKrishnaraja Chaduranga Sudhakarah, Kempu Kitabu, Sankya Shastra, Chaduranga Chamaatkrita Chakra Manjari, Chanduranga Bannada Mane.

The top floor of Sri Jayachamaraja Art gallery (the erstwhile Jaganmohan Palace) is a veritable treasure house of the board games invented, devised and improvised by Mummadi.

The murals which have now been restored to their past glory are in dark earthy colours of reds, orange, yellow and black and are in the form of boards ( 6x6, 8x8,10x10 and a few 12x12 squares). Many of the murals have figures of animals or have geometric patterns.

The Karmic game of Shivasayujam ‘ reinvented ‘ by Mummadi is a spiritual version of the game of snakes and ladders meant for four players . In Mummadi’s variation, the deity appears in a 'Mukhalinga' form in the middle of the board wih at the centre, with Nandi, Ganesha and other deities. The four players each have six pieces, whose starting squares are marked within lotuses at the corners of the board.

The games of Shivasayujyam and Devisayujyam ( which is also based on the law of Karma ) have religious motifs and are supposed to lead the thoughts of the players to the realm of the gods themselves.
There are of course several other writings of Mummadi that deserve to be mentioned but one that is stupendous in its scope is ‘SriTatvaNidhi.’ A rough translation could be ‘ Illustrious Treasure of Truth.’

According to scholars, SriTatvaNidhi is a compilation of the iconography of South India deities and planets and commentaries on them. It is believed that apart from two surviving copies , one at Mysore’s Oriental Research Institute (ORI) and the other at the Saraswati Bandaram Library at the Mysore Palace, there is one other section of this work that is in an undisclosed private collection in the USA!

The SriTatvaNidhi was meant to be a reference work and one portion (Nidhi) the Kautuka Nidhi ( published by the ORI) is a compilation of the board games, their history, rules of the game as well as the variations devised by Krishnaraja Wadiyar.

Mummadi is also said to have devised complex card games to be played with Ganjifa or Chad cards. In SritatvaNidhi’s Kautuka Nidhi, Mummadi describes 13 card games requiring anywhere between 36 and 360 cards.

Mummadi’s contributions have yet to be recognised in this country though he is better known in the rarefied air of board games players abroad.

Kreeda Kaushalya hosted by Ramsons Kala Pratishtana (RKP) is in one way a homage to Mummadi Krishnaraja Wadiyar.

Kreeda Kaushalya which began on May 10th at RKP’s Pratima Gallery above Aamrapalli Showroomon the Nazarbad Main Road will conclude on May 26th at around sevenish.

Kreeda Kaushalya is just one of the many initiatives of RKP to revitalise the handicrafts industry of the country and provide a fillip to crafts persons across the country.

Did Ganjifa cards originate in Mysore ?

2013-05-14T13:43:00.004+05:30

For some strange mysterious reason, it is often presumed that Ganjifa cards, those circular playing cards with strongly painted characters in vivid colour, had their origins in Mysore.

One reason could be found in one of the former palaces of Mummadi Krishnaraja Wadiyar III, the Jaganmohana Palace, the king divested of all temporal power by the British, spent his time writing tomes about board games, inventing variations and so on.

Ganjifa cards seem to have been known during the king’s reign and he devised several new games for these Ganjifa cards. The Mysore Ganjifa or Chad cards as they are known range between 36 and 360 per pack! But where did the cards come from?

Historians says that Ganjifa cards came from Persia even though one would life to make Mysore their home.
The earliest reference to these circular cards is made in Rubaiyat-i-Ganjifa by Ahli Shirazi, the Persian poet of either 1514 or 1515 and you could pick either year and it won’t matter much! The Rubaiyat refers to a eight suited pack.

The name, Ganjifa, is a corruption of the Persian word, ‘Kanjifa’ that means ‘ Treasury’

The cards made their way into India with the emigration of Turkoman kings at the beginning of the 15th Century. In the Babur-nama (Chronicles of Babur) written somewhere in the 16th Century and also Abu’l Fazl-i Allami’s ‘Ain-i-Akbari ‘there are references to these Ganjifa cards. That would place the cards making their presence in the 16th Century.

The cards seemed to have gradually died in the Middle East with the orthodox ruler, Shah Abbas II of Persia banning the game. But the march of the Mughal kings who were expanding their kingdoms also meant the movement of this card game across the country.

The cards pictorial designs too changed from pure Mughal art motifs on the cards like ghulam( servant), taj( crown) shamser ( sword) ashrafi ( gold coin) and so on to Ganjapa ( It’s Oriya for Ganjifa) cards where the Ghulam suit becomes Gulab (rose) and so on.

Dashavatara Ganjifa which portray the 10 incarnations of Vishnu or the Chad cards of Mysore of which, the Chamundesvari Chad with 16 suits about which Mummadi Krishnaraja Wadiyar has written in the SriTatvaNidhi and of course there is more.

Obviously it is clear that Ganjifa cards’ oirgin can be traced back to Persia and it acquired various avatars and methods of playing depending on that part of the country.

How do you play a Ganjifa card game?

If you have played Bridge, then you should be able to pick up the nuances of this more complex game. But that can wait for now.

A variety of Ganjifa cards are on display and are for sale at the board games biennale, Kreedaa Kaushalya , organised by Ramsons Kala Pratishtana (RKP) in Mysore at its Pratima Gallery, above Aamarapalli showroom on the Nazarbad Main road. Earlier editions were an annual affair.

This year’s mela which began on May 10th will conclude on May 26th .

This celebration of board games of India is just one of the many initiatives of Ramsons Kala Pratishtana Trust, set up in 1995, to revitalise the handicrafts industry of the country and provide a fillip to crafts persons across the country. You could look up the website of Ramsons for more details.

Learn to be calm in the face of chaos!

2013-05-14T13:35:00.006+05:30

Or you will lose the game of Tigers and goats

The legendary mountaineer, the one and only Reinholt Messner, gave this mantra that he followed and climbed every mountain solo and without oxygen. One, Learn to be calm in the face of chaos; Two, Perseverance: if you to have crawl on hands and knees, you are going to get there and three, Observation: Pay attention to detail.

You will need all three qualities when you sit down to play the game of Aadu-Huli aata or Tigers and goats, or its more complex variation, Leopards and deer. This is a hunt game and while it looks simple it as complex chess or the Japanese game of ‘GO’.

This game of Aadu-Huli aata is one where two unequal forces are pitted against each other.The powerful Tigers or Leopards on the one hand and the weaker sheep or goats ( and sometimes men) on the other.

The games proceeds thus: The powerful tigers or leopards ‘ kill’ the weaker sheep or goats by jumping over them in a straight line and onto a vacant space. But the weaker sheep or goats do not have this advantage of leaping over but instead they ‘ gang up’ and pen the powerful tigers into a state of immobility.

Whether you draw the tigers or the goats, either way, you have to mentally plan your strategy and there are several ’what if’ questions that you need to work out in minutes before you even make a move.

If you are the goatherd then being calm in the face of the chaos let loose by the tiger is necessary and if you are tiger then willy-nilly you will have to kill as many goats as possible to your opponent gives in.

The third dictum of Messner , Observation is straight out of Go since you have take the board and the placement of the tigers and the goats in its completeness.

Was this game invented by shepherds to pass time?

No one knows for sure. But the presence of these game drawings etched in various courtyards of temples across the country suggests that this game was, to use a typical Indianism, “ time pass’!

Look at the various names for this game, bakri-bagh or bagh bakri in Maharastra and Orissa or bok bakri , athara satiya elsewhere... and there must be many more names... for this game played by common folk in cities and villages.

The quilted and embroidered cloth Tiger and Goats boards in all their diversity including variations of this game involving complex moves, can be seen this year at the board games biennale, Kreeda Kaushalya , organised by Ramsons Kala Pratishtana (RKP) Trust established in 1995, in Mysore at its Pratima Gallery located above Aamarapalli showroom on the Nazarbad Main road.

This year’s mela which began on May 10th will conclude on May 26th .

This celebration of board games of India is just one of the many initiatives of RKP to revitalise the handicrafts industry of the country and provide a fillip to crafts persons across the country. You could look up the website of Ramsons for more details.

Luck be a lady tonight

2013-05-14T13:22:00.001+05:30

Frank Sinatra’s slow liquid drawl as he sings , ‘Luck be a lady tonight’ mirrors the prayer of the riverboat gambler as he shakes the dice in his cupped hands, the pile of chips dwindling fast.

There is something about Dice and women .. like deep calling to deep... both fickle .... that sets the pulse racing!

Think of J. Bond in his tux made by Huntsman of Savile Row in the Casino Royale, throwing dice, watched by sultry, slinky slinky ladies and assorted villains fingering Walther-PPKs or what-have-you and you will get the picture.

Change the scene from Bond to say, a river boat on the old Mississippi to a barsati in Delhi or a long pyol in one of the older houses in T-Nagar, Chennai or even the old fashioned verandah in old Mysore, dice when thrown evokes the in-drawn breath, prayers to the Almighty and the kiss of the lucky charm or amulet.

Dice just are not thrown, they are cupped in the palm of the hand, the palm closed and brought close to the mouth so that much like’ The Horse Whisperer,’ one whispers that secret mantra and then flips them on to the mat or floor.

Then there are several variations like staring at the dice as if trying to hypnotise them into submission, or shaking them overhand , then underhand and like some flair bartender using both hands and shaking them with desperation and finally much to the relief of other players, flipping them on the mat.

Dice whether they come in the form of ivory pieces or made of precious stone like Onyx, jade and exquisite lacquer ware, are all the same... they are as fickle as a woman. Remember Carlos Santana’s ‘Black Magic woman’ or that song of an earlier decade, Cliff Richard’s ‘Devil Woman’ ... She’s just a devil woman with evil on her mind...’

Before the vast army of feminists rouses itself baying for blood, one spreads out the Pachisi board and four players gather their counters and one of them begins to roll the dice. Peace is restored?

Each of the players in his or her turn endeavors to send his counters racing down the centre of the arm from the middle, counterclockwise right round the perimeter and then back to the starting point. In the meantime every attempt is made to sidestep and ‘kill’ the opposing counters in the melee.

Incidentally, this player who threw the dice seven times in a row and got the number seven when toted up, felt this was an omen too good to be true. He then legs it up to the races where he places a sizable sum on a horse wearing the number seven in the seventh race. Even the jockey had seven on his jacket. The race started and the Number seven came seventh in the race, the last one. The player has now given up Pachisi since it involves throwing dice and has taken up chess instead!

If not chess then you are liable to come across an even more incredible collection of board games at the board games mela, Kreedaa Kaushalya Board Games Mela , organised by Ramsons Kala Pratishtana (RKP) in Mysore at its Pratima Gallery. above Amarapalli showroom in Nazarbad.

This year’s mela which began on May 10th will conclude on May 26th .

This celebration of board games of India is just one of the many initiatives of RKP Trust established in 1995, to revitalise the handicrafts industry of the country and provide a fillip to crafts persons across the country. You could look up the website of Ramsons for more details.