Imaginative games: Cheap shot

The most expensive of toys are no match for the games these children invent.

While many children in Karachi and indeed across Pakistan were busy playing with their toy guns this Eid, there were some who either don’t have access to such fake weaponry (money, parental disgust) or who aren’t interested in it.

These are the children who play games they have invented or ones that don’t involve a trip to the toy store where their parents will have to fork out hundreds of rupees for Chinese plastic.

Girls, especially those living in predominantly Pashto-speaking neighbourhoods in Karachi, are perhaps the most inventive:

Chindro

Twelve-year-old Tooba likes to play Chindro with her friends in the street outside her home in Masan. She explains that for Chindro you first need a flat circular stone or wooden block and flat surface, which can be the ground. You mark a rectangular box on the ground, divide it vertically in the middle and then horizontally with three lines. This will give you eight boxes.

The players toss a coin and the winner starts the game. Tooba throws the stone in the first box, hops and aims to hit the stone into the box above with her other leg. This continues for all the boxes. If the player touches any line she loses her turn. If you complete a round, on one leg all the while, and get the stone through all eight boxes, you get a point and another turn. It is almost like hopscotch with a few variations; the stone needs to be kicked and not thrown into the box and none of the boxes are numbered. You start by moving up the right column of boxes and coming down the left column.

Bilovri or Kanchay

Bilovries are marbles or glass pieces sold in the market. A number of games are played with bilovries and usually the winner gets to take them home. In one commonly played game, the children try to put the bilvories into a small hole that is about one inch wide and deep from a distance of about five to six feet. To aim, stretch your middle finger back like a bow-string by applying pressure with the forefinger of the right hand. Then shoot the marble by releasing the finger.

Ghotti

“We usually play Ghotti inside rooms in the summer or in the grounds in the evening after we complete our Quran lesson in the seminary,” explained Tehreem, a class 4 student who lives in Keamari. Ghotti is played with five small round stones. Usually two or three girls take part. You put all five stones in the sand and then pick one and throw it in the air. That stone is called the Taak and you can only use one hand in the game. You have to pick up another stone from the sand and catch the Taak before it touches the ground. If you fail to get another stone or catch the Taak, you lose your turn. If any player completes a round with all four stones without letting any of them drop she gets a point and the second turn.

Shalghaatay

Shalghaatay is played between two teams. Team A closes their eyes in a street and Team B marks lines with chalk or charcoal on the wall of a house at some hidden place. Team A has to find those lines.

Published in The Express Tribune, Sunday Magazine, August 25^th, 2013.

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