First Entry for Forgotten Indian Games - Nivedita's Event

Actually, I planned to post another dish with fruits today but my sister and one of my best friends got angry when I told them the dishes I have in my draft to be posted for my event Think Beyond the Usual with Fruits. Because they have planned to send those dishes. They said they would be sending them shortly. Hope both find sometime to send their recipes in their busy schedule.

So, I decided to post something well away from cooking today. I was very happy when I read Nivedita's Forgotten Indian Games event announcement. It took sometime to come out of my good old childhood memories. I know most of us here would have played almost all the games she mentioned in her post. I loved the way she tried to explain few games. If she didn't have done that I wouldn't have understood what "Chigali" is..

We lived in an University quarters where the houses are in rows with every two houses share a common left sided compound wall. I had lot of friends and whatever we do we used to be together. One of my friends taught me the preparation of the spiced tamarind (Guess, this is what Nivedita's Chigali is!!) Mom was very concerned about our health and so, she never encouraged us eating this spiced tamarind often. When the queen of the kitchen is totally against this lovely preparation, how could we prepare and relish? The way we found was,"stealing" ;-) The moment, my mom leaves the kitchen, in a fraction of second I would collect (steal!!) everything (tamarind, red chilly powder, salt and sugar) from the kitchen. My friend would be waiting for me near Ammi (Flat grinding stone/Metate) in our backyard. My job gets over with handing over the stolen things to her.Then, she would mix all the ingredients together and would press it using the round rolling stone(Kuzhavi). At times, my sister would also join us. We call this delicious preparation as "Puli kotti "(புளி கொட்டி). I don't know why we called it with that name! Few months back, I get to eat one Mexican Candy "Pulparindo". That tasted similar to our those days preparation with tamarind.

During summer holidays, my cousins would also join our gang. Our favourite games were Raja, Rani, Thirudan & Police; kola kola ya mundrika; oru kudam thanni oothi.. We used to play all these games in the open place in front of our house. The game Raja, Rani, Thirudan & Police is actually a guess game which needs four players. We have to write down Raja, Rani, Thirudan and Police in four bits of paper and then fold the papers in similar shape and size. Now, the folded bits are thrown to the floor and each player should pick up one. You should not reveal what you have in your folded paper to other players. Only, the person with police written on his bit would shout out saying that he is the police, who is supposed to find the thief. If he guess the thief correctly, he would get points otherwise his point would go to the thief. The points are calculated as Raja 10, Rani 5, Police 1 and Thief 0. This can be played any number of times and finally, when the game is over the points are added and who gets the highest point would be the winner.

We played Bus game when we go to my mom's native place. My mom's cousin's kids would also join us. In one of the houses, we had swing. We all used to stand in four corners. (Guess, most of you would remember that old model swing made out of wood.) We imagine that to be a bus. One of us would be a conductor and he would issue the ticket (Just waste paper bits!!!). Someone would push the swing and that person is supposed to be the driver. Others would be the passengers. We played same game with doors moving front and back. My dad too said, they played similar game.

Another one interesting game is "Pallankuzhi". For this, we need two players. This is yet another indoor game like Raja, Rani, Thirudan and Police. Almost all the houses would have this wooden board. For info on this game, go here. You can get ordinary looking board to minutely worked wooden boards. I think both my aunts have very minutely worked very very cute pallankuzhi with them.

This post is really getting too long and better, I stop here. I don't have any pictures to share with you all related to this post.Hope my fellow blogger friends would come up with lot of other interesting games.