CHENNAI: In my last article, I spoke about tamarind seeds and few articles ago, I spoke about the red seeds known as chirmi or gundumani or manjadi. Traditionally, there were numerous games played around seeds of different types as they were a wonderful, versatile, and readily available material to play. In today’s world where sustainability is the need of the hour, seeds performed this ole wonderfully as they are natural, biodegradable and when tossed away after play reintegrate with our earth.
This variety of games played with seeds, leaves, fruit, sticks and more, have been played for years, and have spawned so many games making the treasure in the trees truly a remarkable inspirational point for play.
Seeds have numerous advantages. They’re small, colourful, and come in different shapes, sizes, weights and textures, allowing for a wide variety of games based on the seed. But one interesting game is the game of Odd or Even. A simple child’s game, it involves picking up a handful of seeds and holding it in your fist and challenging the opponent to decide if it’s odd or even.
Many are quick to dismiss this as a guessing game, but it is the ability to understand human nature, psychology and thinking that is reflected in this. In fact, Edgar Allan Poe in his story, The Purloined Letter, refers to this very game. In the story, an armchair detective, manages to find an incriminating letter and save a lady’s reputation, while police detectives are baffled in their search. The detective then refers to how he used the psychology of an individual, much like a schoolboy, uses the same psychology in the game of Odd or Even to decide, what the opponent holds in his hand.
“I knew one (school boy) about eight years of age, whose success at guessing in the game of ‘Even and Odd’ attracted universal admiration. This game is simple and is played with marbles. One player holds in his hand a number of these toys and demands of another whether that number is even or odd. If the guess is right, the guesser wins one; if wrong, he loses one.
The boy to whom I allude won all the marbles of the school. Of course he had some principle of guessing; and this lay in mere observation and measurement of the astuteness of his opponents. For example, an arrant simpleton is his opponent, and, holding up his closed hand, asks, ‘are they even or odd?’ Our school boy replies, ‘odd,’ and loses; but upon the second trial he wins, for he then says to himself, the simpleton had them even upon the first trial, and his amount of cunning is just sufficient to make him have them odd upon the second; I will therefore guess odd’; — he guesses odd, and wins.
Now, with a simpleton a degree above the first, he would have reasoned thus: ‘This fellow finds that in the first instance I guessed odd, and, in the second, he will propose to himself upon the first impulse, a simple variation from even to odd, as did the first simpleton; but then a second thought will suggest that this is too simple a variation, and finally he will decide upon putting it even as before. I will therefore guess even’ guesses even, and wins.
Now this mode of reasoning in the schoolboy, whom his fellows termed “lucky,” — what, in its last analysis, is it?” “It is merely,” I said, “an identification of the reasoner’s intellect with that of his opponent. — Extract from The Purloined Letter by Edgar Allan Poe. We are often quick to dismiss our games as simple, childish pleasures, often frivolous or of no account. But within each of them are hidden truths that could transcend, that reflect human life, human intent, human behaviour and human thinking. What is also interesting is that these truths are universal, leading to the popularity of similar games across the world.
To preserve our games and to play them regularly provides us these insights that can only improve our lives. While we refer to many of these games as Indian games, the fact that they were played in more or less the same manner across the world indicates that they are human games appealing to human nature. Today, many things divide us — our religion, our culture, our food, our dress, our language, but a deep study of games will lead us to understand that we are united by our games for they have their basis and foundation in human belief.
Vinita Sidhartha
vinita@kreedagmes.com
The writer is an author and the founder of Kreeda, an organisation reviving traditional games