CHENNAI: On a quiet afternoon, I dropped in at a craft exhibition. When I mentioned my interest in games to the artisans from Rajasthan, one of them mentioned the game played with the bright red chirmi seeds. Chirmi are known in the south by the names gundumani or manjadi. They are two distinct seeds but are often used interchangeably. While one is round and smaller and has a black eye, the other is more oval and is fully red. The artisan told me of a game they played with these seeds. Everyone would bring a few red seeds with them and bury it in a heap of sand.
Then each player in turn would have an allotted time to find as many seeds as possible. The player with the most seeds would be the winner. I could well imagine the glee of collecting these beautiful jewel-like seeds. I was reminded of another similar game which I used to play as a child when we visited the beach. One person would bury something in a heap of sand and all the others would have to guess its location. Sometimes, a ten paisa coin would be buried, and the winner would enjoy a glorious ice cream as a treat!
This links to an interesting legend from the Ramayana. The story goes that when Sita was kidnapped, she threw her jewels out of the chariot to leave clues for Rama and Lakshmana. When some of the earrings were brought to Lakshmana, he was puzzled and said he could not recognise them as he had barely seen Sita’s face.
This was considered a mark of respect in those days. However, when a ring of Sita’s was shown to Lakshmana, he recognised it immediately and recounted the fact that he had seen Rama and Sita play with it by burying it in sand on the riverbank. I was fascinated to hear the story and enjoyed the image of the young couple playing together a game that is played to this very day.
It is also fascinating to explore the simple yet exciting games that were fashioned by our ancestors with simple things around them — just red seeds and a heap of sand. But, India is not the only country to have games such as this.
These games are simple and elemental and rooted in basic human responses to stimuli. Often, we find similar games across the world. Did they spring up independently in different countries? Did they travel along ancient trade routes? We may never know the answers, but every culture has its games, and stories about them. There is another fascinating story about these red seeds, but for that you must wait for my next column. Or perhaps you could write to me with stories as you might have heard about these games.
That to me is the fascination of traditional games. We may never be able to write down their history in detail with date or time of origin, but their roots go back in time, providing us a link with our past, culture, way of thinking, even our trees and beyond all, our identity.